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[LectureMaster]

"I thought PlayStation was finished": Former Sony boss says TV sales were the only thing that could save the company when the PS3 was "losing a billion dollars"

Hanging on for dear life

www.gamesradar.com

---

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida reveals that the PS3 lost Sony one billion dollars - but fortunately the company's TVs were selling well enough to offset the loss. You've got to diversify your income, folks.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Yoshida talks about the troubles that faced the PS3. "The second year of the original PlayStation was very hard," Yoshida remembers. "I was very concerned. PS3 was another hard time. At the time I was part of management, so I could see the financials. We were losing a billion dollars. I thought PlayStation was finished."

Even for a company as big as Sony, a billion dollars back in the mid-2000s was a hefty chunk of change. "But luckily, at that time Sony’s flatscreen TVs were hugely popular," Yoshida says. "The TV group was making enough money to cover the losses from the PS3 and we were able to survive. But that was the most difficult time."

Sony and Microsoft both bankroll PlayStation and Xbox, and both companies do a lot more than just make video games, so it's nice to see that they'll sometimes cover the gaming division's losses rather than just lay off thousands of people.

Another tough time for the PS3 was the PSN outage, Yoshida notes. I remember that. It was horrible having to actually do homework instead of playing Call of Duty with my friends. We did all get a couple of free games from Sony as an apology, though.

"It lasted months," Yoshida remembers. "It’s unbelievable how hard that was internally."

Fortunately for Sony, the PS4 put the company back ahead of the Xbox. Suddenly, all my friends who had 360's were skipping the Xbox One and making the jump to PlayStation. I've been a lifelong Sony pony, mostly because my mum bought me a PS2 and then a PS3 because the numbers made sense. I felt like the PS3 was lagging behind Xbox at the time, but who was I, an unemployed 11-year-old, to tell her that most of my friends had an Xbox 360?

"We loved the system," Yoshida remembers. But there were still some surprises that developers had to deal with. "Up to PS3, the system was already designed. Even our first-party development teams were notified after the fact. One day we were told, 'The next controller has a motion sensor.' What? They asked us to create a demo a week before E3. Make a demo with this motion sensor. They kept everything secret. I couldn’t believe they did that. The Warhawk team did it, and Ken loved it. But that was the relationship. It was like the Great Wall of China."

Luckily both PlayStation and Xbox have survived the trials and tribulations of the 2000's and are still going strong today. It's predicted that Nintendo is going to be ahead of both companies in the next console generation though, and whoever is in third place will struggle greatly. Maybe that's why Xbox seems to be working on making its games available on more platforms.

---

 

[Topher]

Let it all out Yosh

 

[Fake]

Keep doing interview Yoshida.

 

[bender]

As much as I love crazy Ken, replacing him with Cerny was probably one of the companies best decisions ever.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

We knew that era was unbelievable tough not only for PS but for Sony as a whole. In fact, there was a meme of Sony announcing bankruptcy every time a financial report was coming up.

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

It's quite amazing how we as players see the industry and how sometimes the companies see it, like to me PS3 was amazing, the best console yet.. while to Sony it was losing money. Another example can be some lets say online service game taht a lot of us won't want and prefer single-player games, yet to companies it can make a lot of money.

 

[Fake]

It's quite amazing how we as players see the industry and how sometimes the companies see it, like to me PS3 was amazing, the best console yet.. while to Sony it was losing money. Another example can be some lets say online service game taht a lot of us won't want and prefer single-player games, yet to companies it can make a lot of money.

To be honest, the PS3 is indeed a great piece of hardware. A console that play Bluray movies, support HDMI from the start, fully BC with PS1 disk and PS2 disk, not to mention XmD is IMO one the best User Inferface a console have ever.

Their main problem was the bunch of bad decisions, not to mention the silly choise of using the CELL with create a barrier most of devs can't get in. Make me wonder if they choise AMD from the CPU of PS3 would solve this issue.

edit: The price also was a big factor.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Yeah but somehow I miss this unconventional tech. You didn't know how far they could push and what the silicon actually was. Today, way before a console is launched, everyone knows the spec sheets, its very straightforward in architecture. We know exactly what to expect way before the console launches.

They would go from God of War 1 to God of War 2, and the sequel is massively improved in all areas. Uncharted 1 to 2 was the same idea. They could keep on pushing. Now its hard to find current-gen only sequel examples since games take a decade to make, but I guess you go from MM to Spiderman 2, or FFVII Intergrade to Rebirth. Which you have to look quite hard to see graphical improvements and those previous games were even cross gen.

To be honest, the PS3 is indeed a great piece of hardware. A console that play Bluray movies, support HDMI from the start, fully BC with PS1 disk and PS2 disk, not to mention XmD is IMO one the best User Inferface a console have ever.

Their main problem was the bunch of bad decisions, not to mention the silly choise of using the CELL with create a barrier most of devs can't get in. Make me wonder if they choise AMD from the CPU of PS3 would solve this issue.

edit: The price also was a big factor.

I cursed the PS3 a lot, and before 2009 it was rightfully so as it got the short end with third parties a ton. And also those install times and generally slow download speeds etc. But it was awesome in hindsight. Both 360 and PS3 punched above their weight with HD; at the cost of performance. But the PS3 could do a lot. Online play was free, it had a good BR player, it played PS1 discs (and PS2 at first), etc. I had my best times with PS3 online since my friends were still into gaming, and I never paid a dime for about 7 years of using it.

The more time passes, the more we will see how underrated it is. The games are seriously good. I have a tremendous amount of fun whenever I hook it up. And its basically very similar to a PS5 or Series; it runs off HDMI and supports HD and surround sound, has wifi and ethernet, internal storage, you can download games. On the surface you won't notice its almost 20 years old. And some games like RR7 and VT3, they are really timeless and still look ace.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

At that time wasn’t the tv division losing billions? So how could they cover PS3 losses if TVs were also losing money?

 

[Spiral1407]

That entire generation was a financial loss for both companies tbh. I recall the RROD incident also costing M$ billions to address. Only Nintendo came out unscathed and even then, their choices that gen ultimately led to the Wii U disaster.

Still love it though, we got some killer games despite that.

Their main problem was the bunch of bad decisions, not to mention the silly choise of using the CELL with create a barrier most of devs can't get in. Make me wonder if they choise AMD from the CPU of PS3 would solve this issue.

edit: The price also was a big factor.

I'd argue the choice of GPU was more problematic. It was dogshit hardware for '06 and the 360s GPU beat it in most areas.

It also exacerbated CELLs issues. Even developers who were well versed in the CELL architecture were forced to use part of its capabilities to assist the GPU.

 

[Unknown?]

Explains why PS4 was so "safe" and didn't see any real risks. It was great, just wish we didn't see so many closures with nothing else to replace them.

 

[Killer8]

This is why discussions about sales figures are often asinine and unhelpful.

PS3 sold 87.4 million units which sounds like a success, but the true story was that it was a failure for Sony (if you aren't considering it as a Blu-ray trojan horse - which ended up being irrelevant anyway once streaming got big).

Compare it to PS5 now and Sony are rolling in money. The best thing they ever did was appoint Mark Cerny as their lead hardware architect.

 

[kevboard]

I'd argue the choice of GPU was more problematic. It was dogshit hardware for '06 and the 360s GPU beat it in most areas.

It also exacerbated CELLs issues. Even developers who were well versed in the CELL architecture were forced to use part of its capabilities to assist the GPU.

the GPU choice was a direct symptom of the focus on the Cell.

they originally wanted to use 2 Cell processors, one for CPU tasks and one for GPU tasks.
then their internal studios basically told them that they are fucking crazy and that this would result in a PS2 HD instead of an actual next gen capable system.

that late into the development they then had to quickly get a GPU deal, and Nvidia "came to the rescue".


you could still see the aftermath of the original concept with the Cell as a GPU in early trailers. like the first couple of seconds of gameplay they showed of Resistance for example looked legit worse than og Xbox titles.
the final game also didn't look that much better than an og Xbox game running in HD, but they did the best they could to reconcile the hardware issues I think.


Microsoft made the right choice by looking at the best GPU they could get (an ATi GPU that was almost a year ahead of PC tech in fact) and telling IBM that they only want the main CPU core of the Cell in a tri-core configuration to have a simple setup for devs.

 

[Spiral1407]

the GPU choice was a direct symptom of the focus on the Cell.

they originally wanted to use 2 Cell processors, one for CPU tasks and one for GPU tasks.
then their internal studios basically told them that they are fucking crazy and that this would result in a PS2 HD instead of an actual next gen capable system.

that late into the development they then had to quickly get a GPU deal, and Nvidia "came to the rescue".


you could still see the aftermath of the original concept with the Cell as a GPU in early trailers. like the first couple of seconds of gameplay they showed of Resistance for example looked legit worse than og Xbox titles.
the final game also didn't look that much better than an og Xbox game running in HD, but they did the best they could to reconcile the hardware issues I think.


Microsoft made the right choice by looking at the best GPU they could get (an ATi GPU that was almost a year ahead of PC tech in fact) and telling IBM that they only want the main CPU core of the Cell in a tri-core configuration to have a simple setup for devs.

There were also rumors of a successor to the PS2s Graphics Synthesizer being in the cards, which I honestly think would have been a better fit. Hell, it would actually solve the bandwidth issues that the RSX and developers could use their legacy knowledge from PS2 for development. It would also give CELLs ridiculously high SIMD performance a purpose. And if not that, then they could have AT LEAST put a G80 GPU variant in the thing. PS3 launched AFTER the 8800 GTX, so it was obviously in development at the same time as PS3.

 

[kevboard]

There were also rumors of a successor to the PS2s Graphics Synthesizer being in the cards, which I honestly think would have been a better fit. Hell, it would actually solve the bandwidth issues that the RSX and developers could use their legacy knowledge from PS2 for development. It would also give CELLs ridiculously high SIMD performance a purpose. And if not that, then they could have AT LEAST put a G80 GPU variant in the thing. PS3 launched AFTER the 8800 GTX, so it was obviously in development at the same time as PS3.

the switch to Nvidia mid development and the already very high cost of the rest of the hardware made it impossible for them to get a better GPU I guess.

having a dedicated GPU design takes a lot of R&D time and budget, which they wasted on that Cell GPU idea.

they sold the thing at a massive loss even in the state it finally released.
I bet Nvidia knew how fucked they would be without them and made them pay as much as they could for as little as they needed to deliver.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

We’re Nintendo the only ones that managed a profit that generation?

 

[PaintTinJr]

There were also rumors of a successor to the PS2s Graphics Synthesizer being in the cards, which I honestly think would have been a better fit. Hell, it would actually solve the bandwidth issues that the RSX and developers could use their legacy knowledge from PS2 for development. It would also give CELLs ridiculously high SIMD performance a purpose. And if not that, then they could have AT LEAST put a G80 GPU variant in the thing. PS3 launched AFTER the 8800 GTX, so it was obviously in development at the same time as PS3.

That's what I understood too, the major problem for Sony with the CELL BE was that needing two per console when yields were below 20% or something at PS3 spec and IBM presumably had first pick for the Road Runner super computer and other uses, and Toshiba's Regza TVs didn't have enough demand to take the 80% out of specs chips, so lots of wastage, so using 2 CELL BEs per PS3 and effectively halving yields would have been even harder financially and an issue for having enough inventory until yields doubled IMO.

But had it worked out, the Toshiba RSX would have been far superior in fillrate and the the two sets of SPUs of the two CELL BEs would have been closer to a GTX 280, and unified 512MB of XDR would have been better, along with another PPU core for general purpose game code.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Sony lost the TV business to LG and Samsung.

Pretty sad really they invented the LCD TV.

 

[ReyBrujo]

Saved by all the TVs being sold to new Wii owners

A console that play Bluray movies

More like a blu-ray player that played games, just like the PS2 with DVDs.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Sony lost the TV business to LG and Samsung.

Pretty sad really they invented the LCD TV.

Sony released the first OLED TV too

Japanese staff from the likes of Sony and Panasonic used to fly over to Korea in the 90s to teach them how to make TVs at the weekend

 

[Spiral1407]

the switch to Nvidia mid development and the already very high cost of the rest of the hardware made it impossible for them to get a better GPU I guess.

having a dedicated GPU design takes a lot of R&D time and budget, which they wasted on that Cell GPU idea.

they sold the thing at a massive loss even in the state it finally released.
I bet Nvidia knew how fucked they would be without them and made them pay as much as they could for as little as they needed to deliver.

Oh they definitely did. The GPU was one of the most expensive individual parts of the PS3 despite being gimped and heavily outdated. Oh and did I mention that it had the exact same hardware flaw that caused RROD too? Sony pretty much got scammed.

That's what I understood too, the major problem for Sony with the CELL BE was that needing two per console when yields were below 20% or something at PS3 spec and IBM presumably had first pick for the Road Runner super computer and other uses, and Toshiba's Regza TVs didn't have enough demand to take the 80% out of specs chips, so lots of wastage, so using 2 CELL BEs per PS3 and effectively halving yields would have been even harder financially and an issue for having enough inventory until yields doubled IMO.

But had it worked out, the Toshiba RSX would have been far superior in fillrate and the the two sets of SPUs of the two CELL BEs would have been closer to a GTX 280, and unified 512MB of XDR would have been better, along with another PPU core for general purpose game code.

The low yield likely remained a problem even going into the 2010s. EVERY PS3 has a deactivated 8th SPE regardless of when it was made.

I feel like 2 CELLs was also doomed from the start, unlike the Toshiba GS2. It would only exaccerbate the issues developers were having with PS3 games. Personally, I would have pushed for:

• 3 PPEs and 5 SPEs to make 360 ports easier.
• 512MB of unified XDR to take advantage of its admittedly low latency.
• A GS2 with unified shaders and 16MB of fast EDRAM.

 

[Sintoid]

That's so strange to hear about this kind of difficult time, everybody now loves PS3...

 

[PaintTinJr]

Oh they definitely did. The GPU was one of the most expensive individual parts of the PS3 despite being gimped and heavily outdated. Oh and did I mention that it had the exact same hardware flaw that caused RROD too? Sony pretty much got scammed.

The thing is the Nvidia RSX seams to include ~ $48 worth of GDDR3 going by the cost of the XDR for 256MB, so probably not quite as bad as it initially looks if comparing to the Xenos from ATI that was just 10MBs of ESRAM because the 512MB of DDR3 was unified with main memory cost.

 

[kevboard]

Oh they definitely did. The GPU was one of the most expensive individual parts of the PS3 despite being gimped and heavily outdated. Oh and did I mention that it had the exact same hardware flaw that caused RROD too? Sony pretty much got scammed.

The low yield likely remained a problem even going into the 2010s. EVERY PS3 has a deactivated 8th SPE regardless of when it was made.

I feel like 2 CELLs was also doomed from the start, unlike the Toshiba GS2. It would only exaccerbate the issues developers were having with PS3 games. Personally, I would have pushed for:

• 3 PPEs and 5 SPEs to make 360 ports easier.
• 512MB of unified XDR to take advantage of its admittedly low latency.
• A GS2 with unified shaders and 16MB of fast EDRAM.

the 20GB model was probably a really painful pill to swallow by Sony. they had to have an entry level model, but that cost difference is crazy

 

[otakuninja2006]

Wow. I wonder what will happen after the PS5/PS6 fails.....

 

[PaintTinJr]

Oh they definitely did. The GPU was one of the most expensive individual parts of the PS3 despite being gimped and heavily outdated. Oh and did I mention that it had the exact same hardware flaw that caused RROD too? Sony pretty much got scammed.

The low yield likely remained a problem even going into the 2010s. EVERY PS3 has a deactivated 8th SPE regardless of when it was made.

I feel like 2 CELLs was also doomed from the start, unlike the Toshiba GS2. It would only exaccerbate the issues developers were having with PS3 games. Personally, I would have pushed for:

• 3 PPEs and 5 SPEs to make 360 ports easier.
• 512MB of unified XDR to take advantage of its admittedly low latency.
• A GS2 with unified shaders and 16MB of fast EDRAM.

No, the yield issue was fixed AFAIK by the time they did the first node shrinkage, which given the number of nodes they went through was probably within 2years tops. The retail price was at £399 with 4 games IIRC when I got in on the last model of 60GBs with the PS2 Toshiba RS and EE. and by the time I replaced with a Slim on the night of the UK GE(May(?) 2010) when Cameron was elected it cost under £200.

 

[Spiral1407]

The thing is the Nvidia RSX seams to include ~ $48 worth of GDDR3 going by the cost of the XDR for 256MB, so probably not quite as bad as it initially looks if comparing to the Xenos from ATI that was just 10MBs of ESRAM because the 512MB of DDR3 was unified with main memory cost.

To be fair, the only reason GDDR3 is even in the PS3 is because of the RSX. XDR is superior in both bandwidth and latency afaik

the 20GB model was probably a really painful pill to swallow by Sony. they had to have an entry level model, but that cost difference is crazy

Iirc, the 20GB was initially going to launch without HDMI but it was backtracked because of the HDCP requirement for blu-ray. That choice probably increased costs even more.

No, the yield issue was fixed AFAIK by the time the did the first node shrinkage, which given the number of nodes they went through was probably with 2years tops. The retail price was at £399 with 4 games IIRC when I got in on the last model of 60GBs with the PS2 Toshiba RS and EE. and by the time I replaced with a Slim on the night of the UK GE when Cameron was elected it cost under £200.

Really? I wonder why they kept including an extra SPE then. That couldn't have been cheap when you consider how many PS3s were made.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Wow. I wonder what will happen after the PS5/PS6 fails.....

The only place that will happen is in your head at night when you touch yourself.

 

[Kerotan]

All those Xbros buying their Sony TV's saved the ps3.

 

[PaintTinJr]

To be fair, the only reason GDDR3 is even in the PS3 is because of the RSX. XDR is superior in both bandwidth and latency afaik
..

Yeah, true - I wasn't suggesting otherwise - just that for comparative accounting with the Xenos the 9600s or whatever the RSX is, was only $90 dollars more - which is $1 dollar more than a second Cell BE going by the list.


It did do proper 10bit HDR, 32bit depth, and proper sRGB gamma colour correction (accelerated for free) that the Xenos couldn't do, and could render nearly double the Xenos geometry with optimised geometry meshes or do PhysX acceleration, so offered more, for more cost if we workaround fillrate bottlenecks compared to the Xenos embedded Ram.

 

[Fafalada]

Yeah but somehow I miss this unconventional tech. You didn't know how far they could push and what the silicon actually was.

Also having some uniqueness to each console software look was nice - at this point they're so interchangeable that even the Switch only really differs in its physical form factor, games largely look the same everywhere minus the performance delta.

Fun bit with PS3 is that it never got pushed all the way either - PS3 (and 360) could have done PBR but that just arrived too late to be used.
Likewise for TAA, frame-gen - but most importantly - PS3 was perfectly placed for resolution reconstruction in terms of compute throughput (pretty much every PS3 game ever released could have been reconstructed to 1080p if the algorithms existed at the time).
Now granted - none of that would necessarily fix the atrocious framerate that was synonmous with that gen - but at least we could have had image quality sorted.

 

[Calverz]

All those Xbros buying their Sony TV's saved the ps3.

Imagine relying on television sales to save your gaming brand. Huge L

 

[Fake]

Saved by all the TVs being sold to new Wii owners



More like a blu-ray player that played games, just like the PS2 with DVDs.

Well, is a console. And as I said, read PS1 CD and also PS2 DVD.

IDK if Blu-ray players did this that time.

 

[Spiral1407]

Yeah, true - I wasn't suggesting otherwise - just that for comparative accounting with the Xenos the 9600s or whatever the RSX is, was only $90 dollars more.


It did do proper 10bit HDR, 32bit depth, and proper sRGB gamma colour correction (accelerated for free) that the Xenos couldn't do, and could render nearly double the Xenos geometry with optimised geometry meshes or do PhysX acceleration, so offered more, for more cost if we workaround fillrate bottlenecks compared to the Xenos embedded Ram.

The RSX is based on G70, which predates CUDA, so I don't think it could do PhysX acceleration. Its vertex performance was also downgraded from G70 iirc, which is why games like Ninja Gaiden 2 had lower enemy counts vs 360.

I've never heard about that first part though, that's news to me. If true, at least it did something right

 

[PaintTinJr]

..

Really? I wonder why they kept including an extra SPE then. That couldn't have been cheap when you consider how many PS3s were made.

Probably because it was a unified design between them Toshiba and IBM, meaning IBM were getting the full SPU use in their products and it was probably a free way for them to host parts of PSN on consumer standby power. A dedicated server is still dedicated whether it is in your consumers console or your telecom partners buildings or your own server racks, the SPUs were hypervisored so had full autonomy

 

[Hookshot]

It was widely know that the PS3 swallowed up all their previous gens profits. The TV stuff is new I guess.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

the GPU choice was a direct symptom of the focus on the Cell.

they originally wanted to use 2 Cell processors, one for CPU tasks and one for GPU tasks.
then their internal studios basically told them that they are fucking crazy and that this would result in a PS2 HD instead of an actual next gen capable system.

that late into the development they then had to quickly get a GPU deal, and Nvidia "came to the rescue".


you could still see the aftermath of the original concept with the Cell as a GPU in early trailers. like the first couple of seconds of gameplay they showed of Resistance for example looked legit worse than og Xbox titles.
the final game also didn't look that much better than an og Xbox game running in HD, but they did the best they could to reconcile the hardware issues I think.


Microsoft made the right choice by looking at the best GPU they could get (an ATi GPU that was almost a year ahead of PC tech in fact) and telling IBM that they only want the main CPU core of the Cell in a tri-core configuration to have a simple setup for devs.

Yup, it seems like the Reality Synthesizer was a last minute “plan B”. I remember (wish I could find it) the rumors came out that Sony was licensing something from Nvidia and everyone thought it was either not PS3 related, or else just some tech that would be included in the Cell (Ars Technica speculated this). Nobody thought they’d straight up use a Nvidia GPU in the PS3. There was even an interview with some Sony higher up where they were asked if they were using an Nvidia chip in PS3 and he said something like “no that’s ridiculous, we don’t need Nvidia’s help.” Makes me wonder if he didn’t even know about it at that time.

And they basically got a gimped GeForce 7900 with a 128 bit bus and its own pool of GDDR3, even though the Cell’s RDRAM seems like it would’ve been well suited for VRAM. Looks like a last minute panic decision, no way in hell they would’ve designed it that way if they had more time.

 

[PaintTinJr]

The RSX is based on G70, which predates CUDA, so I don't think it could do PhysX acceleration. Its vertex performance was also downgraded from G70 iirc, which is why games like Ninja Gaiden 2 had lower enemy counts vs 360.

I've never heard about that first part though, that's news to me. If true, at least it did something right

IIRC develop magazine adverts referenced PhysX on PS3 RSX at the time

Here's a link to the partnership announcement.

NVIDIA Provides Physics Technology for PLAYSTATION 3

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that it has signed a tools and middleware license agreement for PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI). As a result, the binary version of the NVIDIA PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) is now available to registered PS3...

www.techpowerup.com

I couldn't find reference to it actually being used on RSX, but copilot when explicitly asked about the G70 based hardware said it was "capable" even if for performance reasons PhysX could have been used on SPUs instead.

As for downgraded polygon performance, that was only a winding issue where it cripples with Xenos level batches, the wiki still quotes a full 1.1billion/sec and 1billion polygons - where in quad mesh you can get 1 polygon for every extra vertex after the first 2 vertices for the first triangle in a quad mesh. GT5 and GT6 have monster amounts of geometry to suggest it could easily do more than Xenos' 400M polys/sec

 

[Topher]

Wow. I wonder what will happen after the PS5/PS6 fails.....

 

[Spiral1407]

Also having some uniqueness to each console software look was nice - at this point they're so interchangeable that even the Switch only really differs in its physical form factor, games largely look the same everywhere minus the performance delta.

Fun bit with PS3 is that it never got pushed all the way either - PS3 (and 360) could have done PBR but that just arrived too late to be used.
Likewise for TAA, frame-gen - but most importantly - PS3 was perfectly placed for resolution reconstruction in terms of compute throughput (pretty much every PS3 game ever released could have been reconstructed to 1080p if the algorithms existed at the time).
Now granted - none of that would necessarily fix the atrocious framerate that was synonmous with that gen - but at least we could have had image quality sorted.

Resolution recosntruction would have been great since the PS3 lacked a hardware upscaler for some reason.

IIRC develop magazine adverts referenced PhysX on PS3 RSX at the time

Here's a link to the partnership announcement.

NVIDIA Provides Physics Technology for PLAYSTATION 3

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that it has signed a tools and middleware license agreement for PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI). As a result, the binary version of the NVIDIA PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) is now available to registered PS3...

www.techpowerup.com

I couldn't find reference to it actually being used on RSX, but copilot when explicitly asked about the G70 based hardware said it was "capable" even if for performance reasons PhysX could have been used on SPUs instead.

It was almost certainly handled by CELL. CUDA was a requirement for hardware accelerated PhysX on PC (which is why AMD never got it) and porting that to a single non-unified shader GPU would have been too much effort. CELL is also well equiped to handle it due to its high SIMD performance unlike contemporary CPUs.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Oh they definitely did. The GPU was one of the most expensive individual parts of the PS3 despite being gimped and heavily outdated. Oh and did I mention that it had the exact same hardware flaw that caused RROD too? Sony pretty much got scammed.

The low yield likely remained a problem even going into the 2010s. EVERY PS3 has a deactivated 8th SPE regardless of when it was made.

I feel like 2 CELLs was also doomed from the start, unlike the Toshiba GS2. It would only exaccerbate the issues developers were having with PS3 games. Personally, I would have pushed for:

• 3 PPEs and 5 SPEs to make 360 ports easier.
• 512MB of unified XDR to take advantage of its admittedly low latency.
• A GS2 with unified shaders and 16MB of fast EDRAM.

TBF, ALL high-performance electronics at that time (PS3, 360, PC GPUs etc.) suffered from "bump gate". The PS3 actually handled it better than most because of the smart engineering that went into the cooling and overall chassis design. Also, Sony/SIE didn't rush their system out the door or skip on QA testing to beat a competitor to market by a year.

360's RROD was so legendarily awful not just because of "bump gate", but also because MS notoriously ignored many warnings from factories ahead of launch that the systems might've had some major problems. They split up assembly across a bunch of different locations and stress-tests just exacerbated a component of the chips that was bound to fail. Fitting all that processing power into the (admittedly sleek) chassis only made the situation worst.

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[jroc74]

We knew that era was unbelievable tough not only for PS but for Sony as a whole. In fact, there was a meme of Sony announcing bankruptcy every time a financial report was coming up.

Yeah, I found out towards the end of that generation. Its amazing the comeback Sony did with the PS4....and wild that if last gen woulda been as bad or worse PlayStation might have been shut down, sold off.

Wow. I wonder what will happen after the PS5/PS6 fails.....

Wut.

 

[DenchDeckard]

So looks like Sony rode out the storm by using another part of the companies funds to cover the losses from that arm of the business.

Crazy to think PS3 gen could have sunk playstation.

 

[Det]

Imagine relying on television sales to save your gaming brand. Huge L

Just lie that "it's sustainable for us"

 

[DenchDeckard]

All you had to do was lie for 20 years, hiding your profits, and have an army of weak losers licking your brand, easy.

Yeah. Clearly the numbers Sony have shared, convincing their fans that they are highly successful are bullshit.

Doesn't surprise me that they say they need to increase margins. They are probably still fudging the numbers to hide the real facts.

 

[Spiral1407]

TBF, ALL high-performance electronics at that time (PS3, 360, PC GPUs etc.) suffered from "bump gate". The PS3 actually handled it better than most because of the smart engineering that went into the cooling and overall chassis design. Also, Sony/SIE didn't rush their system out the door or skip on QA testing to beat a competitor to market by a year.

360's RROD was so legendarily awful not just because of "bump gate", but also because MS notoriously ignored many warnings from factories ahead of launch that the systems might've had some major problems. They split up assembly across a bunch of different locations and stress-tests just exacerbated a component of the chips that was bound to fail. Fitting all that processing power into the (admittedly sleek) chassis only made the situation worst.

The thermal design on early PS3s was great but it was ultimately the fan curve that saved the day. Afaik, the 360 relied on a static temperature target rather than a fan curve like PS3, which meant that 360s were essentially locked at the GPU killing temps from day one. I think the 360s cooling system was generally good enough to support the console if the GPU didn't have the underfill defect. And even with the defect included, a significantly lower temperature target would have gone a long way. The original Xenons had the GPU running at 97C!

 

[DeepEnigma]

All you had to do was lie for 20 years, hiding your profits, and have an army of weak losers licking your brand, easy.

 

[Det]

Yeah. Clearly the numbers Sony have shared, convincing their fans that they are highly successful are bullshit.

Doesn't surprise me that they say they need to increase margins. They are probably still fudging the numbers to hide the real facts.

If anyone asks, say "it's sustainable for us"
The idiots understand that it is profitable, the intelligent understand that the Office's money can sustain

 

[Topher]

Yeah. Clearly the numbers Sony have shared, convincing their fans that they are highly successful are bullshit.

Doesn't surprise me that they say they need to increase margins. They are probably still fudging the numbers to hide the real facts.

Why are you pretending the massive losses of the PS3 is news? And now you are suggesting Sony is cooking the books?

What is wrong with you?