actually this is a smart move, cell processors are pretty much a dead end.

I'm not sure if any of this is a good move on Sony's part or not--financially maybe. From listening to this move one would think that Sony is also calling it quits after this generation of the PS3. Its main problem stemmed from one of the same issue that the PS2 had initially --- poor Tools-- making it harder to program for and show its true potential a great deal sooner than later. It's not the cell processor that's the problem put the companies earlier cockiness. The processor is powerful but the tools are weak. So if someone could have come up with a good baseline OS maybe things would have been easier. The main idea is that the chip is ahead of its time in processing power, which is a good thing in a way but not for a console without proper tools and memory allocation. Imagine a PC with a couple of these chips. It will be interesting to see what happens to future chip development. Maybe the next consoles will all use them.

hmm. so basically, sony is selling the rights(a percentage of sales) to toshiba. a business decision. nothing more

hmm, so basically, sony is selling its percentage of profits. i guess that makes sense. business decision. nothing more

hmm, so basically, sony is selling its percentage of profits. i guess that makes sense. business decision. nothing more

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Autolycus. It sounds like a bit of revisionist history going on here. I understood that the disc read error on the PS2 was corrected in spring of 2003 and at most only effected 16% of the consoles. Sony did a lot of kicking and screaming before admitting there was a problem, as did MS. Still that's nowhere near the 30-40% of 360's that are failing, and MS has also promised us the problem was fixed a couple of times before admitting that every single unit made prior to July of this year had the same fault.
The reason PS3 fans point out this fact is because it's huge. A one in three chance of something happening is good when it's a lotto ticket, bad if it's your console dieing on you. You may not like Sony as a corp, but to many Microsoft has acted like the great satan since it's beginning. I prefer to judge consoles on their own merits, and not the sins of the father. Frankly, I'm having a blast with my 360, but to bury my head in the sand on pretend there's no problems doesn't serve anyone. My PS3, on the other hand, hasn't let me down yet in the quality of their games, the blu-ray experience or the psn, and things continue to look up. You mention in the Milwaukee area no one is interested in the PS3, up here in the great white north I only know one person other than myself who even owns a 360, and I bought it for him! Everyone else I know either has a Wii, PS2, PS3 or is planning on buying a PS3. When I talk to people, the reason is simply no one trusts the hardware with the 360, that's it. 3 year warranty doesn't seem to matter to anyone. Now my social circle is 30 somethings and obviously is not respective of the 360 sales in Canada as a whole, but that certainly tells me something.

One thing is for sure, it much less of an argument now that Sony has dropped their price, even though they have no backwards capability and are stepping on its previous customers that purchased into the Sony theory/dream.

Im not saying its a bad system either. Im simply saying I don't buy a PS3 based on how Sony treats its customers, like cr ap. I am tired of sony going publicly, we sold xxx amount of systems, when in all reality, that just means they sold it to warehouses. Maybe its a territorial thing, but NOBODY and I mean NOBODY is interested in PS3's in the Milwaukee, WI area. They have been burned too many times. I spent over an hour trying to explain the resolution problem that PS3's had w/ DVD's and not playing @ the right resolution, but since think that problem has been resolved.

And when Sony fanboys go out of their way to point of the XB360 problems, the amount of systems that have failed is still FAR FAR less then ps2's "Disc Read Error" which was because of 2 reasons. The blu backed discs would warm up w/ the 4 eye laser instead of a 5 eye laser (like all other dvd players and "eye" isnt really the right term, its just to dumb it down for everyone else) and somehow the ink particals would end up clogging the lens which would result in "Disc Read Error".

I must have had about 10 people a day for 30 days straight, come into our store w/ this problem. Sony was aware of the problem, didnt fix the problem until they got sued and then still went 2 or 3 years old the old "fat" system and finally fixed the problem on the SLIM PS2.

Sony, as a corp, is just arrogant, forgetful and NOT thankful for where their fans/consumers have gotten them. Sony thinks it a large enough powerhouse(in the world) to tell other people what to buy, how to buy it, etc etc etc. They can make electronics but with today's market, they are in no position to tell people how things go, just because they say so. Thats what I am, an anti sony fanboy, and its based on what i've seen. Your views may be different and dont let anyone, including sony of myself, tell you otherwise

AAA exclusives is good reason to own a console, PS3 seems to be lacking them atm, the Wii as been out in the same duration but has managed some great AAA. It's the quality over quantity that counts.

Alot of good PS3 games have been delayed probly due to the difficulty of developing for the cell. Longer Dev time cost extra money for Devs. I think if sony had a chance to do the PS3 over they would of went in a different direction with the processor .

Autolycus. Ug! I feel for you. I've had 3 break on me and I know that frustration. I'm planning a call to the delightful MS people tonight to find out where my $170 rebate is from the second last break I had. I bought my PS3 at launch knowing the prices would drop, knowing that there would be a lack of titles for the first year but so far I'm happy with my experience thus far. It's almost exactly the same experience as I had with the 360. I paid a price, the price dropped. I played Joust for months because there was nothing else I wanted to play after I finished Condemned and KingKong, but then Gears came out after about a year. The main difference was having to pay the $170 for my first console failure after about 5 months that MS wouldn't cover. They rebated that back, eventually, but that is beyond frustrating.
The PS3 was slow at first but seems to be hitting a decent stride now with the titles coming out. I've been buying all my multiconsole titles on the PS3, because I don't 100% trust my 360 anymore, and I haven't had any problems yet. There's only one title I know of that the reviewers lowered their game score from the 360 to the PS3 version, despite the differences and that tells me that ultimately the quality of the games remains unaffected, despite minor graphical discrepancies between versions.

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Autolycus said "We do a title count every day on ps3's and they have under 50 games"
That's interesting. I count 100 games on metacritic, and only 15 of those are download only games. So I'll ask again, how many games does a system have to have before you'll stop complaining it has "No Games"
Is it 100? 120? What is it?
And as for multiconsole games, so what? Do you hear Sony fans saying "Oh, COD4 doesn't count as a game on the 360 because it's on the PS3 as well." A great game on two systems is still a great game, end of storey.

Autolycus is obviously a 360 fanboy.
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Nope, i just dont fall for Sony's PR cr ap that spews from there overly loud voice. We do a title count every day on ps3's and they have under 50 games, that they sell in the US, so keep wishing. Most of those are cross platform too.

Smart move for Sony

---n00b_kid--- asked "you mean games like Lair and R&C"
I never played Lair myself, so I can't say. The reviews kept me away from that one. R&C, yes, it kicks ass. The majority of reviewers would seem to agree with me as well. Any other questions? I'd be surprised if you've ever even seen a PS3. As a gamer I don't understand how anyone who had played on a PS3 could be so anti-PS3. I've found something outstanding on all 3 consoles now and I wouldn't dream of mindlessly bashing any of them. That, apparently, isn't the mindset of half the posters 'round these parts. "LOLz you made me laugh LOL"
Yeah, I've got a pretty clear image on my head of the type of person you are to sit at home and laugh out loud at the very notion that R&C might actually be a great game. LOL indeed.

MS employees: 79,000. Sony employees: 163,000. ???

Last time I checked Sony makes lots of appliances, Microsoft makes computer peripherals a videogame machine an MP3 player and is a Software company at heart. Microsoft knew from the get go it wasn't a good idea to do their own development on Processors and to buy them from someone who is in the processor business.

@noob kid: I meant the processor on its own. Of course the 8800 can outperform the PS3's GPU. Sony rushed it out as believed. @Autolycus: thats what I meant, its unfortunate the Cell was not fully utilized into the PS3.

Sony never stuck me as a huge chip manufacturer. leave it to IBM.

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Autolycus is obviously a 360 fanboy.

Autolycus also incorrectly stated "that is the core reason why the PS3 doesnt have a very large libraby"
They have over 100 games right now, and I believe the 360 had about 120 or so after their first year. That's a decent sized library, IMO. Quick question. How many games does a console have to have before people stop with the "No games! No games!" complaints. 120? 130? 140? What actual number is it?

torres_unix. Nice that you checked up on the cell. What does your post have to do with anything? Sony made a business decision to not make their own Cell chips, but to let Toshiba do it. Your post really isn't relevant to this point at all. And to Autolycus' point, Insomniac said that challenge wasn't any different than the learning curve on the PS2. They certainly don't seem to have any problems making fantastic titles, on time, for the PS3. Some complain, others do. I'm still puzzled by torres_unix's post. At any point did I say the cell was to descend from the heaven's and lead us all to the promised land? I don't pretend to know about chip architecture, but I can sure tell you when it's not really relevant to a conversation. There's plenty of forums for those type of things.

To kaziechameleon: I don't think Sony's saying that the Cell isn't the future as much as they are pulling out for financial reasons. It's obvious they're struggling with money as the gaming division just posted huge losses.

But this is just business people. For all the Sony bashing it's really just a matter of what's better for the business in the future. And what was a great idea yesterday is a horrible decision today (*cough* war in Iraq *cough*).

I took the whole "Cell is the future" thing with a grain of salt anyway. There were way too many vaporware promises to go along with the Cell. After two years of hearing about the Cell I have yet to hear about one Cell-enabled TV, toaster, fridge; nothing. Just the PS3. But that's how things go. Even so I don' t that discounts the power that is stored in the chip. If IBM and Toshiba are continuing with the technology there must be something worth salvaging from the partnership. I'd be more worried if the other guys dropped it for something else.

The only real leader in the 45nm stakes that also is gunning for low power consumption and so of course heat in my opinion if Sony is looking at something different and not IBM would be Intel and you could see intel being keen on a console chip since IBM made a tone of wonger with the current consoles.

Thanks for the clarification Dark_Nexus3367; All this time I'd thought the SPEs were actual cores and not just specific elements of the processor that require the main core to function. They sure behave like SMEs in their own right but programming them is a pain; I hope this processor can be used in the future for developing innovative technologies.

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I think it was smart of Sony to opt out of Cell production, as they should have left it to IBM to begin with. Let the companies that specialize in chip production produce them and just take a slice of the profit for helping create the technology.

Also, torres_unix, the SPEs are not cores, they are just processing elements that work with the main core in Cell. That's the problem with it, you need bite sized amounts of data to utilize it properly, which is much harder to work with than processors that can handle much larger amounts at a time. It's a powerful processor when it comes to algorithms and calculations, but it's lackluster for games since the console streams data more than it loads it. The wikipedia definition of the Cell can explain it better than I can, but yes, the Cell would be great for a super computer, but not so good for a game console. Anyways, I wish Sony the best with the image sensor technology they are investing in, and hope the Cell can still be utilized for other pieces of technology that will put it to good use.

torres_unix that is the core reason why the PS3 doesnt have a very large libraby. You would think they would release and IDE and compiler to make it a million times easier.

um, i thought cell was the way of the future that is what sony told it's consumers, guess they were wrong. @oytocin, nice portal reference.

@ torres_unix: Now there's something I love to see. A good comment with fact based research to back it up. What you say is correct and that's exactly what the developers are complaining about now, hence the long development times.

And then there will be cake.

And then there will be cake.

Thanks DarkRide66. I've read technical papers on the Cell and in order to harness true power from it you must program each SPE (core) separately per well profiled algorithms that could be categorized as running repetitive tasks. http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell0_v2.html

After trying to write a few examples on my PS3 I found that although
the power gain is significant, the coding time must be multiplied
by a factor of at least 4.

Because i've thoroughly research the Cell processor and i've seen Sony pull more of their "we are superior to everyone" techniques and expect customers to pay for it. The Cell was great on paper, but releasing a processor this late into the technology timeline with OOP has been around for so long and expecting developers to learned all new logic processing because Sony said so, is pigheaded. My only beef w/ the ps3, is that its main purpose is BLURAY and nothing else.

now ill just wait for toshiba playstaion 3 version lol jk

torres_unix asked "Could this be the acknowledgment to a mistake from Sony's part?"
I certainly think it was a mistake. I have nothing against Sony partnering up to do R&D, this has served them well for decades, but they should leave the actual manufacturing of the chips to people who make that their business. In the end it certainly appears that's the decision that Sony made.

Could this be the acknowledgment to a mistake from Sony's part?

I have to say this for all the haters saying the Cell is worhtless. Obviously that isn't the case since IBM and Toshiba were willing to purchase it from Sony. We'll see what happens in the future with the Cell, but for Sony they must solve the problems of today and start cutting costs. With cutting out the Cell from their production lines it's a good start for them. Sony just took on a little more then they could handle. Hopefully 2008 will be a great year for the PS3.

Autolycus said "thats a good sign for the PS3...ha."
Well there's a well thought out and relevant comment for you. You see folks, what Autolycus is trying to do is somehow insinuate that this is bad news somehow for the PS3, regardless of any actual research and facts. I'm not sure if he thinks MS makes their own chips for the 360 or not, but he probably doesn't view this as relevant in his rush to mock the PS3....ha!

I just want to say to those loser PC fanboys, you can put up whatever expensive processor up to the Cell but it will lose miserably. You just say that you would b/c you are in denial that you threw $$$ down the drain for over-priced crap from Intel.

Its unfortunate already that the PS3 has only 7 SPU's with 6 going to games only. Imagine all 8 going towards gaming??

I can't wait for Cell to be used in computers.
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Just imagine if the Cell had a good memory managment system and could project out of order code, like every other mainsteam processor. but it cant and it wont...the end

thats a good sign for the PS3...ha

thats a good sign for the PS3...ha

thats a good sign for the PS3...ha

That's interesting?!? Now if Sony would just make a deal with Toshiba to end the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war the world could live in perfect harmony!!! lol

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---n00b_kid--- said "You know a PC with Intel Quad core extreme (4 cores, 8 threads) and a Geforce 8800 GT ($250) can easily outperform the ps3"
That's great. And it'll cost $400 and come with a blu-ray player as well, right? What? No? Didn't think so.
Technology is often outdated as soon as it's released. Pointing out the obvious adds nothing to the conversation. Of course you can build a high end PC that will outperform the PS3 but there of those of us that don't need or want a high end PC. Some of us want a blu-ray player to hook up to their home theater systems that plays some kick ass games with no fuss. We'll buy a PS3 and not give a moments thought to whether or not there's a PC out there that can outperform it. Of course there is.

@razu_gamer2
You know a PC with Intel Quad core extreme (4 cores, 8 threads) and a Geforce 8800 GT ($250) can easily outperform the ps3. You have to admit the cell cpu has been overhyped and the sony fanboys were brainwashed with promises of 4D graphics and 120 frames per second. Ken Kuturagi, we are still waiting ?? where is the 4D and 120 fps that you promised ??

Sony wanted to change the world with the Cell. Too bad for sony by the time they got the technology working, normal processors were moving almost as fast. Brilliant plan, terrible follow through.