Corporate Execs talk about Next-Gen Consoles

[JasonLD]

My prediction..
Xbox360: $349
PS3:$399

I do think PS3 will be more expensive simply because of Blu-Ray support...

 

[jvd]

As far as the Blue Ray ROM drive.....I see $80 being a viable price. It doesn't have Blu-Ray burning capabilites (at least I think it doesn't) and I would think that its just the optical lens thats really being taylored towards that format.But in all honestly I see this new technology as the last thing thats driving up the price....its more of what there packing into the PS3. The thing has so many ports its crazy. So I see the actual possible high price coming from the sheer number of items there stuffing into the PS3....not Cell, Blue-Ray and the RSX.....

I see what you're saying, but just knowing how inexpensively one can get a 'card reader' nowadays in retail, I just pegged it at $5. I really don't think all of that junk will add too much, though I did forget about the usb ports and the various A/V outs. I guess I'll toss in another $10 for that and roll the difference into the motherboard costs.

remember having so many busses and components added on to the mother board will increase layers costing $$

Also i think your ram prices are too low . I believe currently on the high end graphics boards that the ram is actually the most expensive part and cutting edge 512 megs of ram (256 of it created so far only for the ps3 and rambus claiming premiums ) will most likely in my head cost a combined 125-150$ ish

then add in the controller that wll be packed in that is another 10$ish and then the uknown factor of combining all the parts into a system and then packaging , manuals

So i really think the price can come close to 500$ . I believe the xbox was over 400$ at launch and so was the ps2

 

[JasonLD]

So i really think the price can come close to 500$ . I believe the xbox was over 400$ at launch and so was the ps2

Huh?? They were both $299 when they launched..

 

[mckmas8808]

royalty fees will have more of a factor on consumer cost than just the cost to make the machine.

I think we can't forget this part of the equation. With Sony fabbing alot of their own parts and taking the RSX off of Nvidia's hands, that should lower the price of the GPU in the PS3.

Like Acert said self fabbing vs. outsourcing is hard to get a grasp on.
________
HOTBOX VAPORIZER

 

[Draikin]

Isn't GTA: San Andreas already using up most of DVD9 disks

on Xbox:
GTA3: 743MB
GTA3:VC: 1259MB
audio data take 800MB on GTA3:VC

GTA SA PS2 iso is 2800MB apparently. Xbox versions are usually smaller.

The largest game this gen is Rallisport 2, because everything is streamed and replicated as much as necessary (if you encounter a texture 60 times on 4 tracks, then it's 240 times on the DVD).

 

[Carl B]

You also have the wireless chip, any non-integrated chips, 3 Gbit ethernet ports, etc...

True, good points - but we're talkign another $5-10; still every little bit adds up, no doubt.

Btw, your price numbers above are all wild guesses. Like pricing XDR at $50 and GDDR3 at $40. Is that just a guess?

Oh yeah they are completely wild guesses, but I tried to err on the side of higher cost vs the side of lower cost. I'm unfamiliar with the cost structures of GDDR3 and XDR as they are not the 'norm' in the PC world, so I was just pickign numbers I felt 'sounded' right, and hoping if there were someone out there with more info on it they would then chime in and correct it to a more accurate figure.

Considering self fabbing vs. outsourcing and R&D it is hard to even get a grasp on it. But I think the closest thing we can get on "cost" is relative measures. CELL is 234-250M transistors. XeCPU is 165M. How will yields compare? RSX is 300M transistors. Xenos is 232M + 100M. Xeno has more transistors, but is the eDRAM more tightly packed?

I won't address the other things but on these above points I believe that the deactivation by default of one of the SPE's on Cell will do wonders to increase their yields, even in light of the fact that there will probably be a greater number of dies with defects on them when compared to the XeCPU - hopefully to the point where most fabbed Cell's will be useable. As for the Xenos, the edram will be fabbed seperately so for fabbing purposes I'm not sure if you can look at the total transistor count; I think it'sll probably compare favorably to the RSX chip in that regard.

Where manufacturing costs come in, I believe, will be in price cuts. If one machine is 20% less expensive to make they can be more aggressive on price cuts. 20% of $300 is $60. i.e. Console A is able to sell at $240 and lose the same amount as Console B at $300, that may be significant.

Seeing as the highest costs, especially at start, will in fact be the GPU and CPU for both consoles, new fab processes will have an immediate effect on reducing the costs to manufacture for both consoles when they become available. Things like HDD's and A/V input components will be much slower to scale downwards and will probably hit a floor at some point - if they're not already there honestly. Blu-Ray should come down though to about the price of the DVD drive by the time the generation has played out.

I will be mildly surprised if Sony comes in the US above $300, and shocked at $400. I think consumers will be happy picking up PS3's at $300 even if MS is at $250. But my gut feeling is once you break that $300 mark all bets are off.

Same thing with going sub $200. $199 is like a magic disposable income point. $199 for a console, especially if it has a pack in, is a great deal. Not many casual consumers drop down $300 for a console. Mainly early adopters, enthusiests, and hardcore gamers. And what do we get in return? Buggy 1st gen HW and a ton of crappy 1st gen games made on alpha kits!

So casual gamers have it made!

I agree that I can't really see Sony leaving the $300 price-point as far as a US launch goes, though I would believe a price of $349 as being a possibility. After all, I paid that much for my N64 back in the day.

 

[Carl B]

Also i think your ram prices are too low . I believe currently on the high end graphics boards that the ram is actually the most expensive part and cutting edge 512 megs of ram (256 of it created so far only for the ps3 and rambus claiming premiums ) will most likely in my head cost a combined 125-150$ ish

then add in the controller that wll be packed in that is another 10$ish and then the uknown factor of combining all the parts into a system and then packaging , manuals

So i really think the price can come close to 500$ . I believe the xbox was over 400$ at launch and so was the ps2

Well, yeah I clearly missed some of the 'incidentals' in my original pricing, and I agree $400 seems more likely than $375 at this point. Still, you think that high of a price on the RAM? I just wish we had any precedent to go on when it comes to the more exotic memory types.

 

[Acert93]

I agree that I can't really see Sony leaving the $300 price-point as far as a US launch goes, though I would believe a price of $349 as being a possibility. After all, I paid that much for my N64 back in the day.

Really? I thought the N64 in the states was supposed to ship at $249 but got cut to $199 before it launched? This old IGN article seems to concur...

But I always forget prices on these things. Usually I mix up the Japanese price and the backmarket price because of availability issues. I had a friend who paid over $400 for a PS2 when it first came out, but I think it officially was $299.

Not a big deal... just foggy. $300 does seem to be the magic number. Yes, inflation goes up but expections go up also.

Just like the 512MB memory, I think it only takes one of them to be price aggressive to force the others hands. Yes we have $250 PSPs and $300 iPods, but gamers are used to $300 launch consoles. It is hard enough to convince consumers to dump their old console for a new one with poor launch games. And why spend $400 on a new console if you can get a $100 console with a ton of AAA $20 games?

That said I think Sony could be successful at $350. If it has a large HDD and TIVO like functions I think $400 would sell in the US to early adopters. But I think to get the mainstream you need to go lower. I think that is why MS has gone with their current arrangement. "Premium" early adopter cash for their Xbox 360, then offer a Blue Laser / Large HDD to price/feature match the PS3 and then drop the normal unit down in price.

 

[Carl B]

Really? I thought the N64 in the states was supposed to ship at $249 but got cut to $199 before it launched? This old IGN article seems to concur...

Was it $249? Could very well be - and the memory of that enormous expense just translated in my mind to $349.

That was back in high school days for me and the N64 was definitely one of the more severe consumer electronics pieces I ended up buying, price-wise. I was on the pre-order list and though the official price may have been $199, I remember them raising the price at the place I was getting it due to 'demand' issues. I got it with Star Wars and Mario 64 as well, which may be what pushed it up in my mind to $350+.

 

[jvd]

Well, yeah I clearly missed some of the 'incidentals' in my original pricing, and I agree $400 seems more likely than $375 at this point. Still, you think that high of a price on the RAM? I just wish we had any precedent to go on when it comes to the more exotic memory types.

well ms will be buying that 700mhz gdr ram and the graphics card will be using it so the limited supply of it will be hard to get .

The rambus ram is specialy made and it doesn't seem like they have any other customers so i would think that would be even more expensive since rambus gets a cut of it and there isn't a ton of companys producing it and buying it to drive the cost down .

 

[Carl B]

well ms will be buying that 700mhz gdr ram and the graphics card will be using it so the limited supply of it will be hard to get .

I see what you're saying, but every high end graphics card is using 700 GDDR3 - not saying that it's high volume, but I do think that going forward the 700 MHz threshhold is definitely going to be where RAM manufacturers are going to try and be.

The rambus ram is specialy made and it doesn't seem like they have any other customers so i would think that would be even more expensive since rambus gets a cut of it and there isn't a ton of companys producing it and buying it to drive the cost down .

It is specially made and Rambus gets a cut, but Sony is a very important customer to those who make Rambus memory and even Rambus itself. I have no doubt it's costing more than the GDDR3 is going to cost, but I have to wonder if these customers would be so bold as to gouge Sony on the price of the RAM since essentially Sony will be their sole customer for some time. Fortunately for Sony, they have Samsung, Elpida, and Toshiba to play off one another as far as XDR pricing goes.

 

[jvd]

I see what you're saying, but every high end graphics card is using 700 GDDR3 - not saying that it's high volume, but I do think that going forward the 700 MHz threshhold is definitely going to be where RAM manufacturers are going to try and be.

to me i see from when the x360 launches till around summer of the following year to be the most expensive time for that ram. The graphics cards will most likely be jumping on it , the xbox 360 will be buying it for millions of units and sony will be buying it for millions of units .

It is specially made and Rambus gets a cut, but Sony is a very important customer to those who make Rambus memory and even Rambus itself. I have no doubt it's costing more than the GDDR3 is going to cost, but I have to wonder if these customers would be so bold as to gouge Sony on the price of the RAM since essentially Sony will be their sole customer for some time. Fortunately for Sony, they have Samsung, Elpida, and Toshiba to play off one another as far as XDR pricing goes.

Its rambus's only customer . they need to stay afloat . Anyway i belive sony made a fab just for this ram so I doubt samsung , toshiba (who seems pissed) and elpida may have other deals or things to produce for more money .

There is no doubt that in the coming years the ram for both will drop drasticly but at launch it will be very expensive

 

[Carl B]

Its rambus's only customer . they need to stay afloat . Anyway i belive sony made a fab just for this ram so I doubt samsung , toshiba (who seems pissed) and elpida may have other deals or things to produce for more money .

There is no doubt that in the coming years the ram for both will drop drasticly but at launch it will be very expensive

I agree the RAM, the GDDR3 especially, will drop in price in the future.

As for the XDR, I believe that Sony's own Nagasaki fab will be doing Cell and RSX, and not XDR; I know they have a joint fab with Toshiba, but I'm not sure if they'll be making any XDR themselves. I mean, if they were, well the costs would just be that much better.

Oh well - we're left with nothing but speculation really. GDDR3 by far is the easier of the two to predict since it's more of an 'open-market' affair, at least without getting IP licensing cost figures from Rambus on XDR manufacture.

 

[jvd]

well remember gdr has been made for almost 2 years now , the lines have been tweaked and there are many suppliers . If sony is producing xdr on thier lines only they could be hit with alot of growing pains and bad yields as is the norm with all new tech

 

[Farid]

Satoru Iwata: It's questionable what the "horsepower" of the two other companies' consoles will be used for, such as fast calculations and high-definition resolution. Creating game software in high definition will require everything from the [graphic's] models to the background to be redone, and it will bloat up development costs. And yet, it has no use for people that aren't playing with a high-definition TV set.

Is that some sort of hint of what's to expect from Nintendo's Revolution (non)HD "policy"?

I don't doubt that the console should be able to support HDTV resolutions, that's trivial.
It just seems that Nintendo doesn't want the Revolution games to run in HD resolutions (>480p) as a standard.

I'm feeling a real sense of danger about the decline in the Japanese gaming population. Patting a dog and telling it to stay [in Nintendogs] is something that anyone can enjoy. We're aiming to increase the population of game players with these new kinds of games.

I really hope that this kind of "softwares" are not produced by EAD or IntSys, because that would eat time ressources from other projects that I give a damn about. The games.
They should farm thoses softwares to third parties and/or to one of their new studios.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Vy,

I think N's public responses have to be very disappointing for people with an emotional desire to see N retake the top spot in the market. They clearly aren't even attempting to do that. They are making a calculated gamble on games over power knowing that either there really will be a "revolution" (ha! even the stupid birds outside my window like shiny things), or they will still be profitable as a niche. It's far more risky for N to try and compete with PS3 and X360 in terms of expense and power.

Acert,
As you mentioned, if Sony made the claim that the BR capacity were required and they turned out to be wrong, who would remember? In the mean time, they can run all sorts of nice graphs showing the difference in capacity with some pretty picture (linking storage size to picture quality), and then you have a marketing edge to go with the "it plays HD movies, too". Additionally, some developer might just actually use that extra space... or actually, any portion over 8.5GBs would be fine.

Imagine a GTA:YourMomAttacks that has twice as much surface area to explore on the PS3 than it does on the X360. Even if there's nothing at all more to the game other than a bunch of 2nd building fronts you can't interact with, etc..?

As soon as that happened, X360 sales would stop entirely. That's a marketing edge, that's a reason to eat the extra cost of the BR. Not because they think it'll mimic the course of history of the DVD because the market conditions for the two are entirely different.

So take the BR out of the equation because there's no benefit to the gamer, Sony has said as much. Anybody who wants BR and can benefit from it will buy a stand-alone player, not a PS3.

Making those assumptions, which I don't think are out of line, do you really think PS3 will do "well" at a price point $50-$100 higher than X360?

Will Sony go out of business? No, but launching later, at a higher price, with features that consumers have to pay for but don't see the benefit from will cause a loss of market share.

 

[cthellis42]

Well it is PR. MS has already taken the position that most games will fit onto 1 8.5GB DVD. It would look bad for Sony to say, "You NEED well over 8.5GB" and then have a lot of games shipping on less than 8.5GB of data, or worse, on DVDs.

Eh, the PR will still exist, but that's just PR. Developers will still use whatever it makes most sense to use, and the vast majority of the public will still have no idea what gets used where, just as they didn't really note the CD games that still existed for PS2. (Heck, do some still come out that way now? I'm sure some could, but I wonder if it matters cost-wise anymore.)

Sony will say it, publishers will still use DVD where it makes sense to, a few comments will get knocked around online and ping-ponged on message boards until 2011, and 99% of PS3 owners won't note any difference regardless. You put the PS3 disk in the PS3 and it runs... Simple as that!

 

[jvd]

Sony Undecided on Hard Disk
Head of technology unsure if hard disk will be included as standard.
by IGN Staff

June 1, 2005 - Sony has been somewhat vague on the inclusion of a hard disk with the PlayStation 3. The system's specifications reveal a slot for a detachable hard disk unit, but there's still not been any talk of a hard disk being included with the system from the start.


It seems that we're going to have to wait for confirmation. In an interview featured in the latest issue of Famitsu, Sony Computer Entertainment chief technical officer Masayuki Chatani, when asked if a hard disk will be included with the system from the start, replies "It has yet to be decided."
Chatani also reveals Sony's reasoning for going with a removable hard disk setup. The company believes that people will want to both upgrade to higher capacity drives in the future and carry their hard disks with them to attach to other PS3 units.

Moving away from the hard disk, Chatani is asked to comment a little on the system's controversial controller. "I don't think there will be any fundamental changes," he answers in response to a question on the possibility of changes to the controller's design, "but it's a prototype, so there could be some small adjustments."

thats stupid as we can remove adn hook up our hardrives to another x360 and we can upgrade to bigger drives as we wish. IF they don't put it they splinter the market

 

[jpr27]

I agree Sony is using Blue-Ray much the way PS2 used the DVD playback. Sony needs to really push to having actual titles (movies) to help solidify it as a PS3 must have. If they dont get early adoption (other then their own studios) it could take away the advantage they are hoping it to be. In the short term Im not looking to change over or replace my DVD collection just because Blue-Ray has come on the scene


I think a little of gambling by both companies is evident. Sony hopes Blue-Ray helps sell not only the PS3 but other Sony products such as HD Televisions and drives. MS is gambling that by the time we need the extra disk area and HD-DVD is truely in demand, it will be time for the next generation of systems anyway.

I for one will not pay $400-$500 for a console no matter the name especially at launch. Adding something that is in its early stages "Blue-Ray" while promising, doesnt justify in my mind spending the extra $$ for it. Rather buy more games for the systems I might own seeing as they might cost $60 to boot

 

[Ty]

Moved some discussion to this topic (many of the older BR/HD-DVD topics have been locked).

A standalone HD DVD player at $1000 is a little different from a HD DVD drive for PC or Xbox 360 at $100 each.

Definitely true. No need for marketing, case, power supply, etc. Better still if the CPU handles decoding - basically piggyback whatever you need off of whatever the Xbox360 can already do.

Did someone say that HD-DVD drives for PCs would only be $100?

NEC also said they'll be releasing HD DVD drives for PC in Sept.

For 100 bucks?

HD DVD recorders will be available in 2006, but I don't see what that has anything to do with a reader.

The quote I mentioned says 2007. Is that old information?

Also MS has already said the content on HD DVDs will be in a 1080p format.

Really? Got a link for that information? Toshiba is saying otherwise (or at least the article I linked to is). They are saying the data is encoded onto the disc at 1080i and that 1080p is not likely. This does not mean that the player couldn't upscale to 1080p but that's obviously not as good as having all the data there in the first place.

I don't want to get into an arguement . But right now isn't the bluray drive on the market over 1000 ?

No fear of an argument, I was pointing out an article that had some interesting information.

And yes, I believe CNET said they expected the first BR players to come out at $1000 as well.

Aside from that Ty all the arguements made for sony putting bluray into thier consoles go for ms also. Except the media will be cheaper and the lasers will be cheaper as they are not as small and less expesnive and have better yields .

And I agree with the gist of your argument that placing BR into the PS3 faces the same cost only because I don't know of the actual cost but I'm guessing they're similar. Then again, MS would be losing a lot of money upfront for their console if they included HD-DVD AND a HDD (which I would have preferred over HD-DVD/BR anyhow). And I kind of doubt they're willing to do that.