Do you reckon that Nintendo Co is finished in the games player business? Do you believe that Sony Corp will become a force in games machines when it exploits its vast movie and music catalogues to create a stream of fascinating new ones? If you answer no and yes to those two questions, do you suppose it is rank stupidity or purblind ignorance that has people saying that the MIPS Technologies Inc RISC is finished in the wake of the Hewlett-Packard Co-Intel Corp agreement – because both Nintendo’s 64-bit and Sony’s 32-bit players will use MIPS RISC cores, which suggests that by 1996 or 1997, the R-series may well have the largest installed base of any 32-bit or 64-bit RISC processor on the market – and the royalty paid on each sale should be quite enough to meet the cost of keeping the design competitive.
