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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (27113)	8/15/1999 2:22:00 PM
From: grok	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

RE: <projected worldwide sales [of games] for next year is 43 million. 100% of them will have 32mb of rdram.> Unclewest, no way will there be 43M*32Mbyte of rambus sold in games next year. The first problem is that the Sony PlayStation is undergoing a big transistion from PlayStation-I to PlayStation-II. Recently PS-I has been the big runner and now Sony to trying to switch over but the problem is that PS-II is too expensive to achieve PS-I volumes by next year. Inside the PS-II is a CPU chip which is larger that Pentium III and a graphics chip which is larger than that. Then add two drdram chips and you end up with something way too expensive for the consumer market. And it is too far out of wack to be subsidized from SW sales. It may get there by 2001 but it won't achieve it's share of 43M units on 2000. Next is Nintendo-64. This machine uses last generation Rambus Concurrent Rdram (Maybe the only successful rambus product up to this point in time -- of course soon there will be many). But its sales have been limited mainly due to Nintendo's insistance on maintaining total control over SW thus discouraging 3rd parties from developing titles. They said that they will work with IBM and ArtX for next generation but it will not be in production during 2000. So the older N-64 has to carry the load in 2000 and its sales are not too good. Finally there is Sega who has been out of it for several years because their product, the Saturn, has been obsolete. However they recently intro'd their new machine, the Dreamcast, and it does not use rambus. Overall, I expect 2000 to be a poor year for games as many customers wait for PS-II (which they can't get enough of) and next generation Nintendo which will still be in development. Perhaps Sega will have better then expected success during this time. It will all change by 2001 and PS-II becomes economical and new Nintendo becomes available. Rambus will do well then. But don't expect huge rambus sales in games in 2000. By the way, of course Sony and Nintendo don't see it this way (or won't admit to it) so please don't bother to reply with quotes from their marketing depts. Same for analysts and reporters who do nothing but draw lines extrapolating growth trends. I've seen them all and don't believe them.