Processing power = Money for gamers? Sony explores new applications for PS3

Sony may have stumbled upon an idea that might just let gamers earn some of their money back from the PS3's hefty price tag. According to a report from The Financial Times, Sony is currently in talks with several business firms regarding the commercial application of the Cell processor, the engine behind the massive power of the PlayStation 3.

[Bad_Karma]

will be intersting to see how this pans out.

[Boink]

sony won't let anyone else make money on their console until they are actually making money off of it.

and even then, they are only talking about only letting you use it to buy more sony stuff which cost them peanuts anyway.

not a bad idea, however I would much rather get some of the 600$ back and chose what I want to spend it on.

[artman]

just enjoy your 360 dude~

[IPlayGames]

PS is in to sharing. you can incorporate almost anything from any company into ps3 even a xbox cam.

[Scrumptious]

So my PS3 can overheat and fail like my 360? No thanks!

I don't care how many "studies" Sony provides, running a CPU at max utilization for expended periods of time WILL cause a hardware failure, it's just a matter of time. No free download of their Live Arcade rip-off will do me any good with a broke PS3.

[WhEeLz]

bro i have kept my ps3 on for 6 days now..and thursday will be its 7th...also the ps3 is built like a computer...heat may be coming out of it..but its not goin to overheat

[DrWan]

Even if your ps3 makes 25 cents a day, you can make all your PS3 600 dollars back in about six-seven years years. I personally think this is a great idea, and no, Sony WILL let you make money if possible because they cannot possibly get anyone to sign up for a paid effort by some other companies; the only way to get player incentive is to pay them!

Why wouldnt them want you to make money, its the participating company that paids you, not out of Sony's pocket, and if the pay is decent, they will get people to buy their console for 'free' basically and expand their user base that way. It's a win win situation for anyone. Such as great idea, but its already being bashed to hell; this is sad guys.

[BIadestarX]

Are you serious... Did you consider the electric bill (which will be more than 25c a day) and how this will affect the lifespan of your console?

Besides I am starting to think that Sony is the evil empire that will bring this world to destruction. What are they trying to do do have us overheat the planet. I am come countries are not making the PS3 illegal yet. Encouraging massive energy consumption is not right.

[sandip787]

its not even that bad of an idea. i wouldnt mind getting a bit of money/PSN points for doing pretty much nothing. however, i am worried about the electricity bills n such, as leaving any energy guzzling electrical appliance is sure to ramp up the cost. not only the bills, but also it will have an effect on carbon emmisions aswell. you lot may laugh, but think about it, lets suppose we've got 10 million ps3s sold in 2008. if everyone used this money making thing, how much CO2 would be emmitied? its 3am, so someone else can do the math lol.
i know i may be thinkin to deep into it, but its still a point.

[DrWan]

I assume you are saying the CO2 form the electric company by providing the energy? The PS3 release heat...not CO2..correct? The fan rotates to bring in the cool air and bring out the warm air from the CPU to cool it down by the process of convection. In order for the PS3 to create CO2 out from NOTHING, it will have to find a source of carbon to BURN. In your body it is sugar, protein, fat, which has carbon backbone, after you strip the electrons, u brathe out the waste as CO2.

In your PS3, nothing is being broken down, you cannot possibly be releaseing CO2 when you play your PS3, you are releasing heat which came from the circuits. So let's get that straight first.

I can tell you when you drive your car and burning fuel for a hour is probably more pollution than a PS3 can make in a year. Now i do NOT have any figures to back it up, but it all depends on how the energy company makes its energy. BUt i think most of us can imagaine..that..can we? I seriously do not think pollution is a major concern, we have like few billion PC running anyways; adding 10 mil PS3 should be insignificant.

If its a nuclear power plant, you get very clean energy but you get nuclear waste which can be taken care off by ...blasting a missle up in the space for space trash IMO lol...not cost effective yet.

[ElementX]

The few cents per day you earn would be used to pay your electric bill.

[DrWan]

of course i would be referring to the profit, not the revenue. I think Sony would not strike a deal that would give you negative profit; it would be bad business model and widely criticized. We'll see how it turns out, i was pointing out 25cent per day to give u guys an rough idea of what it would be like, and the PS3 can pay itself off in six to seven years that's all. No need to be critical on the these fine details that i just made up on the spot, please discuss the general concept of this like the gentleman above that brough up pollution as a possible downside to this...

[tomfoolery]

good idea..........drop the flippin price,....$200.

[TheExodus]

What happened to SONY? First they let their engineers tinker in Santa's workshop unattended for far too long which is how the PS3 ended up in it's $599 predicament, & now every press release has become a WTF moment. Please SONY, just stop. I'm afraid that the next time I turn on my TV after midnight I'm going to see a PS3 infomercial starring Sally Struthers, "Do you want to make more money..."

The PS3's real problem is that it's expensive! Really expensive! Now, there are two solutions to this problem:

1. Price cut
2. Make it cool

Option 1 is likely off the table given production costs & the amount of debt that can reasonably be back-ended, so Option 2 it is. Make the PS3 cool! How hard could it be? Remember Max Headroom, the more latex than CGI icon from the 80s? License him & make him... real! Forget Home because home is that personal hell we all return to at the end of our day. It's where we find the wife & kids waiting to nag us to an early grave instead of that meteor crater we keep praying for. Forget about folding@home because eventually our PS3s will either end up streaming porn over the internet or worse, BitTorrent.

Make the PS3 cool! Stop trying to market it based on what someone I don't know, somewhere I don't care about, can do with my CPU time. I don't want to share! It's mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! I want it to do something for me!

[BIadestarX]

That would be interesting. I wouldn't mind pay you PS3 owners $5/month if you let me host a bunch of porno sites in your PS3.
Ofcourse I am sure Sony will probably take 90% of that.
LOL.

[ER1X]

all you haters in here would be jumping for joy saying it was the greatest idea ever.

[FordGTGuy]

BTW theres no such thing as free money.

[VirtualGamer]

They wouldn't know a good idea unless Microsoft told them one.

[FordGTGuy]

for the most idiotic comment of the month i see.

[VirtualGamer]

How so just because I speak the truth? Some people will paint anything Sony does or does not do as being bad. Some even had the nerve to suggest that people particiapating in Folding@Home project was bad for the enviroment and adds to global warming. Funny they don't feel using electricity for entertainment as doing the same thing only when its done to benifit science or maybe help companies do something they couldn't on their own.

Sony has been approached by business to offer a simliar service that companies could not do on there own. It benfits them, Sony and the PS3 owners who chose to participate. This is know as a win, win, win situation and of course its being painted as a bad idea. So forgive me for being a bit cynical tonight by suggesting that these people would not know a good idea unless MS told them one. The Sony bashing just never ends.

[Whoooop]

How exactly they are going to make money out of a dog!!

[FordGTGuy]

You do know that every piece of electronics in your house is harmful to the environment and to leave it on would greatly contribute to harming the environment. If Environmentalists had it their way everytime you left your house you would not only have to turn everything off but also unplug it all because even when off it can still be harmful to the environment.

Speaking the truth? Who are you Al Sharpton? I bought my Xbox 360 to play games and thats what it does and to do anything else would take it away from being a console.

Plus if you want to call Fanboyism look in the mirror.

Cancer will most likely be cured on accident or from some unknown organism the chances Folding@Home could find it is slim to none. BTW I never said Folding@Home is a bad thing all I said was your comment was retarded.

[DrWan]

Cancer will most likely be cured on accident or from some unknown organism the chances Folding@Home could find it is slim to none. BTW I never said Folding@Home is a bad thing all I said was your comment was retarded.

This is the reason you are so narrow minded, you don't know what the hell you are talking, do yourself a favor and go back to school. You don't even know what cancer is, let alone your extremely stupid comment "cure on accident or by some unknow organism". Everything comes with an opportunistic cost, if environmentalist are so noble to their cause, why do I still see on their bumper sticker "I am an environmentalist" bullshit? They are driving a car and hurting the environment. Environment is nothing without human in inhabit it, we need to cure these disease, and we need to cure it fast. Collectively, cancer, is number 2 killer in America following heart disease. There is a good chance that you or your family will get it, and that will shut your mouth up.

Do yourself a favor and go study biology, go back to elementary school before you open your mouth again and embarrass yourself. Your narrow-mindless will kill you both in your tiny little game and in real life.

Even if we don't find the cure, you have NO idea how important these protein interaction data is for the advance of proteomics, and let me remind you, your body is made up for proteins.

[VirtualGamer]

First eveything that runs on electricity is not bad for the environment. The only thing bad is how the power is created. There are ways to generate electical power that is completely environmently friendly, such as wind power.

The point I was trying to make was that there is a double standard that people on this site find no problem using power to play games but boy if you use it to run a program that helps science then oh boy you have crossed the line!

As to your point of you buying a Xbox 360 to play games and thats what it does and to do anything else would take it away from being a console. That's great but this news article has nothing to do with the Xbox 360 so like why are you here? This does not concern you or your console of choice so do us all a favor and lets leave this for people who own a PS3 to comment on instead of 360 fanboys who have nothing better to do then cruise the PS3 news and make stupid negative comments all the time. And for calling people on this I am labled the fanboy. Until you see me cruising the 360 side to make negative comnments all the time we both know who the real fanboys are.

That said if someone who doesn't own a PS3 wants to come and offer intellegent critisim as to why this is bad for business, Sony and PS3 owners then by all means please let us discuss it. The only problem is it so rarely happens and since Sony is only looking at this atm there are no real details to debate. But I guess you consider comments like this one to be fair and certainly not idiotic or fanboyish since you saw no need to go after bladestar but me instead.

bladestar - That would be interesting. I wouldn't mind pay you PS3 owners $5/month if you let me host a bunch of porno sites in your PS3.
Ofcourse I am sure Sony will probably take 90% of that.
LOL.

As to this comment "BTW I never said Folding@Home is a bad thing " Wow really? So saying, "Folding@Home is harmful to the enviroment and that cancer will most likely be cured on accident or from some unknown organism the chances Folding@Home could find it is slim to none" is not bad? And you said my comment was retarded...wow just wow.

[darx]

May be the lamest concoction of all time! I like to play video games with my systems. Leaving it on all day an nite to fold is stupid!

[Keyser]

When you're sitting in a hospital bed receiving chemotherapy, vomiting from it, loosing your hair, and having no energy whatsoever then you get a chance to say stupid stuff like you just want to play video games.

I know you're 11 and don't really understand how the world and life itself works. You think it's all about having fun and providing pleasure to yourself until your time on Earth has passed. You've been raised wrong by your parents who work all the time. I understand all that. As you grow older, realizing more and more that its not just you on this planet and that we're all in this together you'll say fewer and fewer selfish remarks. Up until that point, people will continue to look at you like you're an idiot. Not that you are, you're just not proving that you aren't.

You leave stuff on all the time, such as your refrigerator. If leaving your console on doesn't damage it, costs you maybe $1 on your electric bill (that you probably don't pay),and it has the opportunity to SAVE SOMEONES LIFE, consider it your chance to give back to a world that you're milking dry.

[techie]

That's the most uninformed, disturbing comment I have read on here.

Folding@home will happen whether the ps3 is involved or not. They have to research the proteins and they have to get it all done. Fact is the ps3's can speed this up. They actually use less electricity than PC's so what you said is bullshit. Also they will make it happen a lot quicker meaning the impact on the environment will be minimal.

You sir are brain dead.

[darx]

"Hey, hey, you, you get off of my cloud"...

What a nit-wit! First off I am 31! And second are you serious with that load of crap you just spewed? I don't come to this site too be serious. I come here for video game news and updates.

Your above comment my freind is even lamer than folding@home!

[MikeGdaGod]

f*ck the enviroment, sony can pay me

[Bathyj]

Someone will accidently drop a bottle of Cherry Flavoured cough medicine into a glass of Dr Pepper and come up with the break through. Man, do you listen to yourself? Your hatred is clouding your judgement.

If you really care about the environment so much you should set an example by turning your PC off, and leaving it off. See if you can convince like minded people like the mart to do the same. For every 10 fanboys that give up the internet one tree in Brazil is spared from choking on CO2. Gee, it just occurred to me, I wonder how much CO2 an old car like a FordGT put out per mile. Probably does more enviromental damage then a PS3 left on for a decade could do.

[FordGTGuy]

You do not understand anything at all. Neither do you deepbrown.

My comment was made because he want to be technical and retarded So I got very technical. Most things are discovered by accident even the Science Channel will back that up (go watch the future world show).

Give up on finding cures? No but trying new ways to find a cure could be way better then running a program 250 years straight to find something that might work.

LMAO did you just say tree choking on CO2!!! you do know trees breathe in CO2 and release oxygen right?

[Says you]

Scrumptious doesnt even know what hes talking about hes full of it just like Microsoft is. and plus the XBox 360 is the king of breaking down considering thats the only thing the XBox 360 is good at is by breaking down by every few months or weeks.

[ReconHope]

i'm sorry take my bubbles but i hear a bunch of assholes

[level 360]

Now it's medicinal/scientific purposes that their going to use the PS3 ( to make-up the money they are loosing in gaming I suppose, which is now pretty obvious... ) but still good on Sony for helping out the science community.

[IPlayGames]

First folding@home now this. pretty sweet

Sony will prob take 90% but oh well if i get like $20 a month then ill just use it on the PSstore and give it back to sony anyway so its a win win for sony from me.

Or use it for gas money.