Sony considers incentives for commercial PS3 use

by Kyle Orland on Apr 11th 2007 2:55PM

Tired of wasting all those idle PS3 clock cycles curing diseases for the benefit of all humanity? Wish you could sell off your extra processing power for prizes and free stuff instead? Sony knows how you feel, and is reportedly looking into a program that would let you do just that.

Sony Computer Entertainment CTO Masa Chatani told the Financial Times that they are in discussions with a number of companies interested in using the parallel processing power of the PS3 network for their own research. Chatani realizes users might be hesitant to simply loan out use of their $600 living room computer to a commercial enterprise, so the company is considering offering incentives such as free products to users who would aid in such research.

This sounds like a win-win-win situation to us: Sony gets a new revenue stream; small companies get their research done relatively cheaply; and PS3 owners get free stuff. Of course, every PS3 running one of these commercial projects is one less project running the potentially life-saving Folding@Home. OK, so maybe it's win-win-win-lose. Still, three out of four ain't bad.

Source

Tags: cancer, commercial, computer, financial times, FinancialTimes, folding, folding at home, FoldingAtHome, incentives, network, parallel, processing, PS3

Reader Comments (52)

"Electricity/environmental impact, and giving money to Sony for something else besides making games.
Sony would be making money off your electricity bill, that's swag isn't free."

I'd argue my enviornmental impact by leaving the ps3 on is more than negated by the fact that I ride a bike to work most days. Pretty sure that the average car on the road pollutes a hell of a lot more than the average ps3 sitting at home churning out work units anyway, let alone the electricity usage and pollution of plenty of other industries. Not totally excusing it, but I am saying in the grand scheme it's little more than a splash in the pan. Hell, my plasma uses 3x as much electricity when it's on, guess I should read a book instead of watching tv or playing games... since when did a group of people who are here because of a mutual love of electronics get worried about electricity usage anyway?

As for cost... $12.23 is the national average to run folding on a ps3, 24/7 for a month according to IGN. I'm sure that Sony would of course take the lion's share of money from these companies, but if the compensation was worth more than that to me, I'd definitely consider it worth my while. I'm folding for free, why not split that time up with some stuff worth a few downloads of games and such? I already let the company I work for make about $60 an hour off my billable time, somehow the idea of someone else making money from my contributions doesn't exactly enrage me anymore.

To an extent, I do agree with you, and I definitely see where you are coming from. But to me, those reasons are essentially moot.