Nelson, > > I believe it is a decision of economics, as Linux never _made_ money for > > Sony. The PS3 itself was rumored to have lost money in the first year or > > so, and who knows if it makes money now? It is games, and games alone > > that make money in this cut-throat game box market. So consider (from a > > purely economic point of view) that each PS3 sold to run Linux, > > especially the clusters, may never run a single game and therefore invoke > > 'break-even', at best. > > In the cbe-oss-dev someone proposed that Sony could sell the other os > installer separately, with its cost being at least the money they are > losing with each console. Also it could be a DLC from the PSN store, > therefore it would be uniquely tied to that system. Don't you think this > would sell more than most PSN small games? I mean they are still paying the > Linux team to support the other model, would it cost that much? I don't > know the price to break-even, but if they break-even on the console with a > couple of games, it can't be that high.
Yes, but the sale of that bootloader must equal the cost of maintaining Linux support internal to Sony, which is surely a multiple person, many hundreds of thousands of dollars annual expense (likely far more). I am not saying I agree with their decisions, but I believe these are the reasons. > > Now, there appears to be good news, but the details are not yet known: > > http://www.develop-online.net/news/32378/Sony-unveils-academic-PS3-dev-ki > >t > > > > "Sony unveils academic PS3 dev kit" > > Is it at least known if it will support regular distros? I think when this > representative said universities can always use Linux, she meant as in the > alternative they had *then* (and in the future with current models after > all). This was a month and a half ago, the ps3 slim wasn't announced at the > time, and neither was fw 3.0. True. And I apologize, but I know nothing more about this. I am going to ask my contact at Sony if there is a public page which speaks to this in more detail. kai _______________________________________________ yellowdog-general mailing list - [email protected] Unsuscribe info: http://lists.fixstars.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-general HINT: to Google archives, try '<keywords> site:us.fixstars.com'
