新一代游戏主机大战，如果你还不明白为什么SONY PS3比微软XBOX360晚一年问世，却被后者打得一塌糊涂的诡异，那今天华尔街日报的读书栏目中《The Race For A New Game Machine》一书，也许能帮我们找到大量线索。
这本由IBM游戏主机CPU设计部门工程师撰写的回忆录中提及，在2001年的时候，SONY、IBM、东芝三者联手研发Cell处理器时，微软随即与IBM接触，以高额订单为交换获得了Cell处理器的详细规格图，并在IBM的帮助下领先于CellCPU量产，从而获得了1年的竞争优势。如果你英文足够加强大，可以参看华尔街日报的此书节选《Playing The Fool》。（来源：爱活网）
Playing the Fool
How Sony inadvertently helped a competitor and lost position in the videogame market.
By JONATHAN V. LAST
Likedynasties rising and falling, videogame systems enjoy periods ofascendancy and popular support, only to be thrust aside by a new andconquering power. First came Magnavox Odyssey (in the 1970s), thenAtari consoles, then Nintendo, which dominated the market for thebetter part of the 1980s. In the early 1990s, Nintendo's Super NES andSega Genesis battled each other for supremacy. Each found enoughcompetitive room to lay the groundwork for the modern videogameconsole, which has become something like a dedicated personal computer.
It was in the mid-1990s that Sony droppedPlaystation into the console market -- a graphics powerhouse thatfeatured games for adults as well as for kids. Playstation was a hugesuccess, selling more than 100 million units. Its 2000 sequel, thePlaystation 2, was an even bigger one.
For the system's ambitious third iteration, though, Sony wanted anentirely new processing architecture. Most computer processing chipsare built on the foundations of the chips that are already in use.Designing a new chip from the ground up is a costly and time-intensiveprocess. So in 2001 Sony partnered with Toshiba and IBM to create theso-called Cell processor -- a chip so powerful that it would redefinePC-scale power.
David Shippy, as it happens, was in charge of designing the brainsof the Cell, the processing core. In "The Race for a New Game Machine,"he and his co-worker Mickie Phipps tell the story of the whole effortto build the Cell. They also describe how the project went off therails, ending up with IBM engineers creating the processing chips fortwo rival videogame consoles and, along the way, delivering to SonyCorp. one of its greatest business failures.
When the companies entered into their partnership in2001, Sony, Toshiba and IBM committed themselves to spending $400million over five years to design the Cell, not counting the millionsof dollars it would take to build two production facilities for makingthe chip itself. IBM provided the bulk of the manpower, with the designteam headquartered at its Austin, Texas, offices. Sony and Toshiba sentteams of engineers to Austin to live and work with their partners in aneffort to have the Cell ready for the Playstation 3's target launch,Christmas 2005.
But a funny thing happened along the way: A new "partner" enteredthe picture. In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making thechip for Microsoft's rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360.In 2003, IBM's Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for thestill-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contractedwith IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM wasstill building with Sony.
All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM wouldeventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to haveoccurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and toSony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony'sR&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to useagainst it.
Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBMemployees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in thecubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors abovethe Cell design teams. Mr. Shippy says that he felt "contaminated" ashe sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch outtheir architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlierwork on Playstation.
The deal only got worse for Sony. Both designs were delivered ontime to IBM's manufacturing division, but there was a problem with thefirst chip run. Microsoft had had the foresight to order backupmanufacturing capacity from a third party. Sony did not and had to waitanother six weeks to get their first chips. So Microsoft actually gotthe chip that Sony helped design before Sony did. In the end,Microsoft's Xbox 360 hit its target launch in November 2005, becomingits own success. Because of various delays, the Playstation 3 waspushed back a full year.
Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps view the delivery of the Cell processorand the derivative Xbox chip as victories for both companies. "BothSony and Microsoft were extremely successful at achieving their goals,"they write. But this is true only in the narrowest sense. The new chipscertainly set the standard for technical virtuosity. Yet the currentgeneration of videogame console has been dominated not by Sony orMicrosoft but by the Wii, Nintendo's modest machine that relies on anolder, cheaper and less powerful chip. With an input device that allowsplayers physically to interact with games, the Wii has been yet anotherrunaway success, selling almost as many consoles as the Xbox 360 andPlaystation 3 combined.
In fact, the Playstation 3 now runs a distant third in sales. (Andthe trend is downward: On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that"U.S. sales of the PS3 fell 19% last month from a year earlier, whilesales doubled for the Wii console and rose 8% for the Xbox 360.") ForSony, the Cell processor was such a debacle that two weeks after thePlaystation 3 finally appeared in stores, the company fired KenKutaragi, the head of its gaming unit, who had championed the Cell andbuilt the Playstation line. The lesson, lost on Mr. Shippy and Ms.Phipps, is that technical supremacy divorced from sound strategicvision is no virtue. It can even end up in disaster.
Mr. Last is a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard.
