No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
IzzyJ@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
You mean the same PS3 that still was profitable?
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
The PS3 was using a rare CPU that you could only get from it or from some enterprise dealer at a much higher price. The Steam Machine is a standard x86 computer that can’t match the ubiquitous ThinkCentres in price/performance.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
If it’s sold at a loss like a console it would beat the price/performance of any other x86 chip on the market, which is why they can’t sell it at a loss, ergo my point.