Hardware manufacturer Nvidia declined being involved with the building on the PlayStation 4, citing the costs involved with building new consoles.
In an interview with Gamespot, Nvidia's senior VP of content and technology Tony Tamasi had this to say about the subject:
"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on...and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay. Having been through the original Xbox and PS3, we understand the economics of (console development) and the tradeoffs."
The PlayStation 4 will use AMD technology in its hardware instead of Nvidia, and the next generation Xbox is also heavily rumored to use AMD as well. But Nvidia is unconcerned with trying themselves up in the console market, and would rather be able to explore other opportunities they would be too busy to go after if they were manufacturing next-gen systems.
"We're building a whole bunch of stuff," Tamasi states, "and we had to look at console business as an opportunity cost. If we say, did a console, what other piece of our business would we put on hold to chase after that?...In the end, you only have so many engineers and so much capability, and if you're going to go off and do chips for Sony or Microsoft, then that's probably a chip that you're not doing for some other portion of your business..."
While Nvidia seems nonchalant about losing the chance to manufacturer for Sony, AMD has a golden chance to make the most of the deal between them and Sony. The PlayStation 4 will be a hot seller when it launches around the holidays, so we shall see if Nvidia's choice leaves them richer or poorer because of it.