DISQUS

Nick Stamoulis · 10 months ago

that is amazing, I never realized that the competition was that close. Makes you wonder a little bit because Sony & Microsoft gaming battle has to be one of the fiercest tech battles since Google vs. Micrahoo.

hood gangstaz · 10 months ago

dam wow that was fun reading this sony had the sheet pull right over their eyes micrsoft is dirty in its own lil way but sony come on guys u couldn't see this a mile away but good story

Thomas · 10 months ago

There are a couple of ways to view Sony's ineptitude on this deal. First, is through the American lens of "How could they be so stupid?". Well anyone who has worked with or for a Japanese company knows that they are very poor at partnering effectively. They tightly control and manage certain things, but then on other important facets of partnering, they completely ignore them. Say, for instance, letting your partner sell a co-developed technology to your closest competitor. I can see why the IBM engineers were perplexed at the gap in strategic thinking on this issue.
However, the other view regarding this is that Japanese companies are very comfortable with technology sharing because of the market dynamics in their domestic market. In Japan, apparently technology is widely shared and/or quickly copied amongst competitors. Think about their digital cameras. Apparently technical plans are widely distributed amongst Japanese companies and core technologies appear in all offerings from competitors very quickly. So maybe they think there isn't much value in controlling this type of issue because it's something they've resigned to in their core market already.

Shane · 10 months ago

Shippy/IBM tries to rationalize that the PS3 and XBox chips are different. Rationalizing that Sony's problems weren't related to IBM. The facts are:
1. Sony ended up paying for a great chunk of the R&D
2. Moral of this story is that IBM is NOT be trusted. IBM has been a blue chip company without the blue chip ethics.
3. IBM has created a new definition of Partnerships! Who's going to partner or do business with them after this episode ?
4. IBM is no better then the Wall Street scammers. Utterly shameful business practices. Make money at any cost.

Was there a loophole in the Sony's contract that IBM exploited?

I'd be interested on follow ups on the ongoing relationship between IBM / Sony and IBM / Microsoft.

Frank · 10 months ago

Wow. That was a fabulous article!!!

Cynic · 10 months ago

Pfft! A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, and merely obscuring the fact that Sony and Microsoft both got an early PowerPC core barely more capable than a 486 customized to their specifications... in Microsoft's case adding SIMD units and hyperthreading and in Sony's case acting as a controller for its ring of stream processors. That's the real story here... two companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars on 1990s era CPUs.

Eddy · 9 months ago

you really are a dumbshit aren't you.... the cell processor still to this day out performs any cpu on the market...and by a longshot to...i don't know of any pc processor pushing 2 teraflops

Engago team · 10 months ago

Must have been a nightmare that the public went to buy Wii instead after all these efforts.