Then I was mistaken, sorry Parrish.
All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2022 Edition]
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Its gamepass thats the killer imo, its easy entry (no hardware needed/production etc etc). The series s is cheaper to manufacture, less effected by semiconductor problems etc, fits in the bad economic times of today and the future. MS couldve never guessed that corona and the west vs east conflicts would happen like this right?
PC gaming is still on the uprise aswell, total pc market might see a decrease due to corona bubble. its a market where MS is invested heavily in.
snc
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misspell, March 4
LOL
No chance they would have predicted that. These consoles are designed years in advance.
As per the hot chips slide decks they made Series S for 2 reasons. The first being that logic density scaling would be okay, but the cost of the SOC would be a forever problem.
As per the bolded, higher wafer price and lower yield => higher SOC die cost.
the second had to do with memory
It wasn't coming down. But flash prices would, so they designed the system around flash. For the most part the market did follow this path, the flash cost is dropping rapidly. I think somewhere in there they assumed the flash drives for xbox should also come down, but perhaps not nearly as quick as the market here.
So combined, is why they made Series S. MS was banking on Series S consoles to possibly drop into a discretionary price range; just grabbing new users in new markets because it's just so cheap to hop in. It was a long term plan for MS for this to occur. Sony had a chance to dominate the market early on, essentially claiming the entire market before Series consoles had a chance to take a decent foothold (which they easily could have been trailing from PS4 and MS from XBO), but the covid supply chain issue stopped them from that. So now they are in a bit of a bind because they are both in a situation where they can only sell what they have. But as time ticks forward Series consoles in particular Series S will come down into that price range in which other markets will bite. And Sony cannot technically drop their prices yet because I'm fairly positive that digital is sold at a loss. And their choice of clock speed makes it harder to slimdown, see the current size of PS5. And if you think about the fact that both MS and Sony should be paying the same for Wafer costs, then PS5 yield must be worse than XSX yield because it's 20% smaller than XSX (and should produce 20% more chips); the XSX has more memory chips, and has a larger flash capacity, and yet the 2 consoles are the same price retail. Somewhere in there PS5 is paying the piper in additional costs on the SOC or cooling it. Series S SOC is nearly 1/2 the XSX, and the price point nearly reflects that, but can't run away from DRAM and flash costs ~(360mm2 vs 300mm2 vs 190mm2)
I know there is great belief in Sony's stronghold and loyalty in certain countries, but that's only if you're competing at the same price bracket. The only true loyalty is towards money, and if Series S consoles can come in at that 199 and below price point (SOC @3nm node drops to ~90mm2 or 100mm2), and with a slim variant ideally even smaller than it currently is (toss the controller while you are at it), bring the packaging size down, bring everything down, to get it to be as no frills as possible, that's going to be a very deadly but inferior product.
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@iroboto Thats not accounting for gamepass, which i think is the unexpected success this generation. Encompasses both MS consoles and PCs, its the cheapest gaming on a yearly basis. Almost like cheating, they include AA/AAA releases.
I wasnt positive at all towards GP before this generation, but it all makes sense to me now. Theres a good reason Sony wanting to compete with GP. I think gamepass is much more worrysome to Sony than the XSS is.
Yea, lol. Ultimately thats where its at, in special in these times and what is to come for the western regions.
I wasnt positive at all towards GP before this generation, but it all makes sense to me now. Theres a good reason Sony wanting to compete with GP. I think gamepass is much more worrysome to Sony than the XSS is.
Yea, lol. Ultimately thats where its at, in special in these times and what is to come for the western regions.
PS5 cooling should be cheaper as it has actually less copper (even less so with the new model) and less complicated solution, all of that thanks to the liquid metal cooling and bigger (even if lighter) heatsink.
And I don't think the higher clocks mean lower yield as they have the advantage of dynamic clocks so they know their APU will never consume more than X Watt. In the UE5 demo both max power consumption were actually very similar. And for all we know XSX could consume 250W in very specific scenarios that must have being accounted for by the designers.
Finally a smaller APU means higher yield so all things considered PS5 / XSX yield could be very similar.
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I was under the assumption that because all PS5s must behave the same, each chip needs to be stable at the full range of clocks at specific loads that Sony has determined. I’m not sure how much that should affect yield, but I do think it has an impact.
I worked out some basic math using a yield of 85%, while the reported yield was 80% in 2020 for a 7nm. This is just silicon defect yield, not parametric yield. The 5% increase should account for the disabled CUs redundancy, though truthfully the number could be higher. These are just guesstimates.
The approximate cost per chip are the following using TSMC revealed pricing from 2020
| XSX | PS5 | XSS | |
| silicon defect yield @ 85% 300mm wafer 7nm | 166 chips / 196 chips | 200 chips / 235 chips | 316 chips / 372 chips |
| 7nm wafer : $9346 / chips per wafer | $56.30 / soc | $46.73 / soc | $29.57 / soc |
| Possible parametric yield corrected | 84% | 70% | 84% |
| 5nm wafer: $16988 yield required same price as 7nm | 301 chips @ 5nm | 363 chips @ 5nm | 574 chips @ 5nm |
Possible parametric yield corrected is basically just assuming that if PS5 and XSX had the same cost per chip (thus the same cost of the console) what would the actual yield be. In this case PS5 would have to ship 166 usable chips, out of their total 235, making their total yield 70%. Or 14% less than XSX. I make the assumption that MS chose a clock speed to maximize parametric yield to be as close as possible to silicon defect yield, thus maximizing the number of usable chips. Parametric yield will drop that number the more performance you ask the chip to do, I'm assume there is always some loss on parametric yield because we aren't accepting all clock speeds below a certain point.
Regardless, I don't think we'll be seeing slim versions anytime soon, a 5nm is near 2x the wafer price in 2020, how much that has come down is unknown. 5nm might come as early as 2023, but 3nm, at earliest looks like 2024. We may be stuck at this particular setup for a while I suspect. The yield has to be significantly better to make 5nm work as a price drop, otherwise dropping to 5nm may help alleviate supply issues if you can get it to come in at the same cost / chip as 7nm.
Johnny Awesome
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I'm betting we don't see new models until at least 2025 now. Too many issues.
I can't comment on all of it , but in terms of surface a lot of it has to due with not having enough stock. I have a friend in SMB sales and its extremely difficult to get stock to fill orders.
Grizzly Teddy
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Due to the uncertainty surrounding getting a PS5 new, I may just get the Xbox console instead. Many of the non Sony exclusives end up on both systems anyway. So the option is certainly there for people like myself.
Plus market forces. If high-end gear is securing 5nm production at a premium, even if it's cheaper at the manufacturing level, price might not be cheaper. Hence we see older processes still around as cost-effective manufacturing. In Ye Olden Tymes, consoles were a premium technological product using the latest, greatest lithography, but that now goes to mobile devices which have a higher need for the smallest process for battery life and can charge several times more than a console for said devices. The newest node no longer brings immediate massive cost savings, but can even cost more.
You can always get a ps5 at a later date. XSX all access is a pretty good deal. $35 a month for 2 years and you get game pass ultimate and the xbox series x for that
Activision Blizzard's mobile games make more money than console and PC sales combined
More than half of Activision Blizzard's revenue came from mobile games in April - June (Q2) 2022. According to Activisi…
www.eurogamer.net
snc
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UK Sales Charts: Week Ending 6th August 2022
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Nintendo Switch Sports
- Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- Gran Turismo 7
- Minecraft
- F1 22
- Pokemon Legends: Arceus
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3
snc
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Last time I checked 80% games were sold digital also on ps5 so similar to other consoles.
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