Although not exactly new news, Ronna Abramson still writes an interesting piece on who stands to benefit from the updoming three-way game console battle between Microsoft’s XBox, Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s Revolution.

TheStreet.com - Gaming’s Surprise Winner: IBM

If you were to bet on a single winner in the next video game-console cycle, forget Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Put your chips where those console makers did — on IBM.

All three companies chose IBM to help design and manufacture the gaming chips that are powering their next-generation video-game consoles, a first for the video-game industry that puts Big Blue in a powerful position.

What’s interesting is that Ronna points out the actual profits IBM stands to make from this exercise are relatively small in comparison when compared to the company-wide profits … IBM is just so large that this isn’t a make-or-break deal. Pity really - would be nice to see IBM’s shareprice skyrocket on the back of Microsoft and Sony’s battle.

Where IBM stands to make even more revenue from this exercise, is the further development of the Cell processor into other consumer electronic devices. There’s a massive market for small, low power devices that need the computational grunt that such a processor can offer - and IBM’s technology will certainly be put to interesting uses I predict.

(via GameTomorrow)

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