All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2020 Edition]

A single like doesn't do your post enough justice, but its all I've got.

 

Sony want the best of both worlds. They want people to buy a PS5 and those that can't to spend money on Sony's exclusive games, which means those games have to be on both platforms. It's a sensible business model even if it does introduce a bit of friction with Sony's messaging. Marketing is almost always bollocks and most people just slurp it up. But I've been on the edge of enough marketing to spot the techniques and be really conscious to it.

 

Agreed.

Sony has made the safe bet that most of the people that were willing to pay $299 for a PS4 will be willing to pay $349 for a PS5 DE a few years later. There's no point in cost reducing the PS4 now, just cost reduce the PS5 instead a few years down the road.

MS is a little different in that they are actually hoping to break into lower cost markets (poor NA, and middle class Eastern Europe, South America etc...) with the XSS which will soon be $249 IMO. It's just a GamePass delivery mechanism to them anyway.

 

I could even see them bundling a 2 year game pass subscription with a 'free' series s during big special offer events, especially in markets they aren't strong. If they did that in some European countries when elder scrolls 6 is released, or when the other big Bethesda games are released it could massively boost their market share. (to be clear I'm saying they could raise their market shares from 5% to 20%, not something crazy like 60%, beating sony)

 

That's not true. Labour is the single most controllable cost WRT most businesses. It is why most manufacturing is now in China. It is why illegal immigrant labor is so prevalent in CA. It is why most manufacturing has moved out of 1st world countries into 3rd world countries.

What is true is that it isn't the only cost and depending on the market segment it is either the largest cost or the smallest cost or anything in between. In Datacenters, for example, labor isn't going to be the largest cost. While in the garment industry, labor is the largest cost.

WRT the current conversation, however, labor isn't the dominant cost, but it's a significant part of the cost. However, if the current gen consoles weren't manufactured in China (or a third world country with low labor costs) they would likely be at least 50-100 USD more expensive if not twice as much.

For some products in the US some companies sell identical products (including materials, etc.) where one costs over twice as much as the other. I recently saw this with a Linux based smartphone as well as a hiking backpack. The only difference? Whether it was manufactured for that company in China or the US. This also applies to Japan. I paid almost twice as much for my Tiger rice cooker that was made in Japan compared to the identical (only difference is the color) Tiger rice cooker that is manufactured in China.

You can't just casually wave away the cost of labor.

Think of it another way, if not for labor intensive industries being moved to 3rd world countries or China when possible, inflation in 1st world countries would be VERY significantly higher.

Regards,
SB

 

That is not the context in which I made the statement, I'm sure you know this.

Nah, it's insignificant. The labour here is the one-off redesign my AMD/TSMC engineers and a board redesign by Sony engineers. The remainder of the cost is spending more money of producing a new semiconductor using a more complex process at lower yields than the current super mature process. Who is making this new chip on what line? TSMC can't keep up with AMD's need, Apple have them making Mac ARM chips and Nvidia want to move GTX 30xx to TSMC 7nm.

 

But there is a huge labor in the manufacturing process and not only.
All these people working in this company and the other companies partnering for the production. It is not just a lab with engineers doing some R&D work and then they hand it over to robots like in the Animatrix

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...its-predecessor-to-claim-no-1-uk-boxed-charts

Good boxes sales for Hitman 3 in UK, probably an error maybe Xbox Sales are 26% or PS4 24% or PS5 48%

Some PS5 were available last week and all PS5 title are up. The interesting case is Spiderman MM. I think some people like me wait to have a PS5 to buy the title.

 

TSMC employs more than 50,000 people, it's a big company but they're not all working on every project and stretches of their process are already heavily automated. It's not the case that larger companies with more employees result in more costs production, in most cases their scale of operation makes them hugely competitive. It's why TSMC are the number one commercial fab in the world. Even Intel use them. Intel!!!

 

Hitman 3 Breaks Series Sales Records With Impressive Digital Launch (screenrant.com)

 

There are labor costs at every step of bringing a console to market. It doesn't start and end with the SOC. If labor costs weren't a significant part of the cost of bringing a product to market then most of the world's manufacturing and assembly wouldn't be located in China and other 3rd world countries. There are, of course, other reasons that lower the cost of manufacturing in China and other 3rd world countries, but labor is by far the largest one.

Of course, the cost of the SOC itself doesn't have labor as the largest cost. And I suspect that's what you mean rather than the cost of the console which was the original discussion.

The largest cost of the SOC is just the huge cost associated with bleeding edge nodes and the relative scarcity of silicon wafers compared to the demand for the bleed edge nodes. Because of these 2 factors, it's unlikely that a node shrink will bring any cost savings. You'll get a savings in die area and transistors but the cost of each wafer start at a lower node will go up canceling any potential cost savings.

Regards,
SB

 

Right, and those labour costs exist now and would exist with a node shrink or other component changes.

If you look at costs, it's more like a sawtooth. The smaller the node, the more expensive the wafer (more expensive materials) and lower the yields. 16nm to 7nm is very likely at best a break-even on die output from 12" wafers but at higher cost. The zig-zag on prices kicks in on high volumes, like Apple volumes. For the small volumes Sony need for PS4, I can't see how this would be viable. 7nm lines are in HUGE demand and 16nm lines are super cheap, the 16nm lines will get converted to 5nm lines down the line - TSMC tend to leap frog lines upgrades like this.

 

Came across this, might be fun for more than me to read.

 

https://vandal.elespanol.com/notici...ndido-en-la-segunda-semana-del-ano-en-espana/

Last week they sold 45 Xbox Series S, 40 PS5 et 5 Xbox Series X for all Spain. This is new stock for Xbox Series X and PS5 not Series S. I will not have a PS5 probably before last quarter of 2021.

https://www.carrefour.es/xbox-series-x-s/cat11972692/c

Xbox Series X and PS5 are sold out but Xbox Series S is very easy to order and only take in 2 hours in click and collect.

 

Its the same here, out of stock till the summer or after that. Everything could be called paper launches 2020/2021.

 

Sony stock is circulating in the UK. A friend managed to get a PS5 and I got ordered a Pulse 3D headset.

 

Yet I saw one go the other day for £650! Meanwhile the XSX resale value shows little to no mark-up...I can't believe the demand is still so high for PS5

 

Its a similar story in Japan. Manufacturing issues?

 

Yes.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps5-xbox-series-x-and-pc-part-shortages-wont-end-soon-says-amd

Lisa Su AMD CEO told PS5, Xbox SEries X and PC part shortage will not be resolved before second half of 2021.

 

The electronics world is seriously supply constrained, we just placed some orders to a vendor (50K units), we got word back that Broadcom had supply issues, so we got a delivery time of April 2022!!! Lucky our vendor is big and they got some financial muscle to throw around and get things earlier for us aka pay more for components.
Lots of smaller vendors are being squeezed out these day.