[quote name='mykevermin']Well, Microsoft has 49% equity in Apple, so they aren't strictly competition (though the cynics claim that MS did so to keep Apple afloat, and to help their cause against the antitrust suit they began undergoing at the time).
Perhaps the chipset for 360 is more powerful, or cheaper (or a combination of the two). The truth is, I have no idea why.
myke.[/QUOTE]
What alternate universe are you posting from? Microsoft had, had as in long since sold off, $160 million in NON-VOTING shares in Apple. Since the company's stock valuation at the was substantially greater than $1 billion, this purchase was a tiny block that would offer little leverage even if it granted voting rights.
The anti-trust issues had been going on since the early 90's. The second round was already well under when the Apple stock purchase occur. It was nothing more than a friendly gesture. Microsoft had plenty of reason not to want Apple to go away including the fact that Microsoft has consistently made more money on selling Mac software than any other company including Apple itself. Office for Mac was a profitable business even while Apple was losing money.
As for the use of PPC in the 360, it's very simple. IBM made MS the best offer on a custome device to meet the needs of what they wanted their next console to be. Microsoft adapted the PC architecture last time due to time constraints. Using that with their existing OS and API code base was the fastest way to get Xbox to market. Otherwise they would have been pretty much shut out of the current generation. On the downside this meant having to buy chips from companies that had neither the time nor the inclination to do much customisation for Microsoft's needs. As a result the Xbox has a lot of costly functionality that is wasted in a game console. Hackers love it but it makes the product bulky and expensive compared to the competition.
Microsoft had much more time to plan for the next generation. IBM's PPC products offered the best combination of price and performance. Other CPU products out there haven't been moving in the direction suited to game consoles. This is why Sony abandoned MIPS after two generations to have PPC as the controlling processor core in the Cell design.
This version of PPC is a major departure from current desktop CPUs. It delivers a lot of performance at low cost but at the requirement of much greater code optimization and the use of techniques that are foreign to most game developers. Neither IBM or AMD could expect to see enough business from a game console, which would by necessity be low margin, to make it worth their time to produce such a major deviation from their desktop and server CPU roadmap.
when it comes down to it there really isn't another big semiconductor company in the world with the motive, ability, IP, and production capacity to match IBM for this job.
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