Kinect-less XB1 fallout thread *spawn

[Rangers]

I had forgot in this whole price discussion there was almost a month where X1 with Kinect was defacto $449 at most retailers.

That makes it seem like a $349/$449 pricing setup might be possible if sales remain weak. That would be pretty tasty.

Another thing that came to my mind is the $399 box doesn't seem like that great a deal. As far as I know every $499 box comes with Forza 5 currently at least, if not Titanfall.

If you assume that a game purchase is a necessity if you buy a console, then the 399 box is $460, and you can then get Kinect for only $40 more since the other version includes a game.

That analysis ignore many complex factors though. What if the purchaser doesn't particularly want Forza or TF though? (I fall in that boat). Or the fact older next gen games like Dead Rising 3 have already been on sale for $19-$29, you could pick one of those up with the $399 system. Or you could purchase no game at all (assuming like me you already have an active Gold sub with 360), and just rely on F2P stuff like Killer Instinct until what you really want comes along.

I wonder how consumers will feel about this. I really dont recall any past figures on the breakdown of Kinect vs non-Kinect SKU's sales for 360, which would be nice to reference about now. I have a feeling in general, the lowest bottom line price trumps all.

Another drawback was, it was nice to see the SKU's consolidate this gen. From last gen when there was up to 5 active 360 SKU's around at any time. 4GB w/wo Kinect, 250GB w/wo Kinect, and a special edition like a Call of Duty edition. That's way to many to burden stores with, and I doubt most stores even had all SKU's in stock at any one time. This gen I found it nice that they were back to 1 SKU. Now for Xbox, it's 2. Which is still better than the default 4 last gen, however, I see a no optical drive Xbox at some point, so we could be right back to 4 SKU's eventually (with/without Kinect for each variation).

 

[Strange]

The SOC's are almost the same size, and I'm of the opinion GDDR5 is a LOT more expensive than DDR3.

Problem is how much. "a LOT" doesn't really give a good idea and is pretty much meaningless. $2 over $0.5 difference is "Quadurple" and surely qualifies as "a LOT" but doesn't mean squat in a $10,000+ BOM.

If we are to believe researching firms...

http://bgr.com/2013/11/26/xbox-one-teardown-bom/

After tearing down both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, research firm IHS concluded that the Xbox One costs $90 more to make than the PlayStation 4, at $471 versus $381. The custom processors found in both devices are among the most costly components, as they’re basically combinations of CPUs and GPUs. The Xbox One’s AMD processor costs $110, $10 more than a similar AMD processor in the PS4. Sony’s console has more expensive GDDR5 memory chips inside that cost $88, compared to the Xbox One’s cheaper DDR3 memory that retails for $60.

and

if the $10 difference with the SOC is true, then the eSRAM probably is a large contributor to the $10 increase.

The Xbox One also comes with a Kinect motion-sensing peripheral, which costs at least $75, while the PS4 doesn’t have an equivalent component. Despite costing $100 million to develop, the Xbox One’s controller only costs around $15 to make.

So if we take out $75 (lowballing) out of $471 we end up with

$396 for XB1
$381 for PS4

Apparantly PS4 still cheaper to make.

PS4s not holding up Sony's cash flow (not having a lot of inventory) and the steady orders going to factory also helps, as opposed to Microsoft having to halt production.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Microsoft has finally acknowledged that the Kinect really is a useless gimmick for almost all games and media.
Voice recognition is a slow input and demands that people awkwardly yell at appliances across the room; skeletal tracing came out laggy and not nearly as precise as most people had hoped for, making it impossible for a minority report-esque UI and control.

If it's only useful for a couple of dancing and fitness games, plus a handful of couch-potatoes who prefer to yell at the TV than to press a button in the remote to change channels, then for crap's sake don't force every consumer to buy one with the console. It's a no-brainer.

I'm glad that Microsoft realized this sooner rather than later. We need smart competition. We don't need "ooh-I'm-so-smart-that-I-can-force-my-crap-onto-customers" competition. Consumers voted with their wallets, the company listened and the end result is a better positioned product.


Honestly, did anyone who doesn't live in a non-native-English country ever expect that Kinect's voice recognition would pull off at a global scale?
Not only Microsoft for the OS, but every single developer who was making a game with voice recognition would have to localize the voice recognition commands for dozens of different languages, (spreading throughout hundreds/thousands of dialects if they ever wanted to make it solid and reliable). It was just not going to happen. If it doesn't happen for dubs, it sure wouldn't happen for voice recognition.


As for the rest, haters gonna hate. I'm tired of the ridiculous steam comparisons, microsoft martyrdom and the "everyone-but-me-is-stupid-for-not-liking-the-previous-policies" speeches. By now, that's just flamebait and doesn't deserve a tiny bit of attention.
I urge you people to not even engage in that conversation. It's pointless.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Well, personally, I still have a few X360 games to play; and I've gone on a little nostalgia streak recently that reminded me just how cool the Mass Effect games were and I still haven't completed even ME2 with a Senitel.

It'd take a really, really good game for me to pick up an X1 this year, but then again I haven't turned on the X360 in quite a while either... Just far too busy with work I guess. It'll keep me quite busy until the end of summer so I can wait to see what E3 and the holiday season brings. At this time, I certainly don't really feel any need to buy another console that I won't be using for a while.

 

[Rangers]

So if we take out $75 (lowballing) out of $471 we end up with

$396 for XB1
$381 for PS4

Apparantly PS4 still cheaper to make.

Yeah, if we trust isupply or whatever, which i dont.

I just saw on GAf there's a verified Xbox dev on reddit who claims the Kinect costs almost as much as the rest of the console. I also recall ERP on here saying the, well here a quick google finds it http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1756748&postcount=1362

In the end it's a shrug...just my opinion.

 

[Strange]

Yeah, if we trust isupply or whatever, which i dont.

I just saw on GAf there's a verified Xbox dev on reddit who claims the Kinect costs almost as much as the rest of the console. I also recall ERP on here saying the, well here a quick google finds it http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1756748&postcount=1362

In the end it's a shrug...just my opinion.

The development costs may be similar, I don't think the hardware comes anywhere close.

That's suggesting ~200 USD for Kinect and ~250 USD for the Hardware.
If that's true, I don't see any good reason for the PS4 to cost ~350 or even 400 USD.
Surely 8GB GDDR5 doesn't cost a whopping 100 USD more than 8GB DDR3.

 

[MrFox]

if the $10 difference with the SOC is true, then the eSRAM probably is a large contributor to the $10 increase.

So if we take out $75 (lowballing) out of $471 we end up with

$396 for XB1
$381 for PS4

Apparantly PS4 still cheaper to make.

Yeah, iSuppli have always been quoted here as being the reliable source of BOM estimates... I don't know why it's not good anymore. Let me think...

Last year I estimated the Kinect2 at $65 but a week later I figured out they were using lasers from the eLASER company, so I upped it to $80. I'd like to know where I would be wrong, or where iSuppli would be wrong with their $75. An opinion should be based on some knowledge and reasoning. You can see that when they had no intention of removing it, it was all "oh it will have a really small impact! You're not paying for it!" and now it has to be "it cost a lot and they can now undercut Sony!".
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=63664

The $10 more expensive SoC can be explained by the small increase of area, but it isn't 10%. It would combine to lower the chip's yield, and it's rectangular compared to the PS4 being a perfect square, so XB1 SoC would be significantly closer to the limits of the reticule, I would assume that could slightly impact it's yield?

GDDR5 being less than expected is explainable by people accepting a common knowledge without source (i.e. intuition or history) and they didn't expect the new node allowing 4gb parts to be ready on time. New node, smaller chip, lower production cost, easier for contract negotiation if you need a steady 200 million chips per year, for a part with a higher margin than DDR3.

Everything else, you only have to look at the horrible integration and motherboard design of the XB1, there are so many weird things, it's filled with questionable engineering decisions. The console is twice as big as the PS4, there's a lot of waste in using an external power supply, it's a big "metal box in plastic box" type of shielding which is a waste of material, lots of connectors, an arrays of expensive caps for power entry and over 120 bypass caps under the SoC (wtf? it looks like an pre-release revision), there's lots of glue logic everywhere. The board itself is gigantic. The heatsink and fan is a crude, simple design, the power supply itself needs a fan, an enclosure, and a high current connector and cable. Those who say it's reminiscent of the PS3's stupid design decisions, I have to agree, but it's worse.

The cognitive dissonance happening with the BOM estimates is because all the arguments for the last 2 years justifying MS engineering decisions hinged on the cost being much lower with DDR3 and the sacrifice was the GPU power. The most reasonable conclusion should be that they really fucked up on the integration side, and cost reduction can only come later. So now it has to be something else. It's possible, but there's some convincing to be done by the naysayers.

 

[eastmen]

well removing Kinect you also have to factor in reduced box size / weight for shipping costs and manufacturing.

Anyway IHS makes little sense to me.

For example , why is the optical drive on the ps4 4 cheaper ? why is the mechanical/electro mechanical $7 cheaper on the ps4 ?

Anyway it looks like he console sub total is 332 vs 348 of the ps4. Then you add in the controller + Kinect + power supply plus other components and you make up the difference

I'm not sure how accurate tehse things are , seems to be random

 

[Betanumerical]

well removing Kinect you also have to factor in reduced box size / weight for shipping costs and manufacturing.

Anyway IHS makes little sense to me.

For example , why is the optical drive on the ps4 4 cheaper ? why is the mechanical/electro mechanical $7 cheaper on the ps4 ?

Anyway it looks like he console sub total is 332 vs 348 of the ps4. Then you add in the controller + Kinect + power supply plus other components and you make up the difference

I'm not sure how accurate tehse things are , seems to be random

Sony is most likely using optical drives that they manufacture themselves it stands to reason that would be cheaper vs buying off a 3rd party.

 

[MrFox]

well removing Kinect you also have to factor in reduced box size / weight for shipping costs and manufacturing.

Xbox one is much bigger than PS4 even without Kinect, have you seen what a bunch of PS4s look like on a shipping crate? The console is twice the physical volume without kinect.

For example , why is the optical drive on the ps4 4 cheaper ? why is the mechanical/electro mechanical $7 cheaper on the ps4 ?

Because MS have to pay for the bluray license (big chunk to Sony) and they also have to pay a third party (liteon) to make the drive for them. Sony makes their own drive cutting the middle man, and they also skip a chunk of the BR $9 per drive royalty.

 

[eastmen]

Yes but the Kinect takes up a lot of room also, so it will reduce the size of the box and shipping costs. its more savings than just the Kinect itself.

Also now I know why sony is going broke

 

[MrFox]

Yes but the Kinect takes up a lot of room also, so it will reduce the size of the box and shipping costs. its more savings than just the Kinect itself.

Also now I know why sony is going broke

That... that doesn't make any sense, I will let this one go as a desperation post.

 

[Nisaaru]

An AMD 7950 with a 35xqmm and 3GB GDDR5 sells for 180$ where 3 main parties try to make a profit from. I don't buy these cost estimates there at all which look more like creative guessing based on some public end user prices.

 

[kalelovil]

An AMD 7950 with a 35xqmm and 3GB GDDR5 sells for 180$ where 3 main parties try to make a profit from.

There isn't a fair competition for a number of reasons.

-The Tahiti die is also sold in the more expensive 7970/R9 280.

-The R9 280 RRP is US$250, you can only get close to $180 by counting temporary discount and mail in rebates. The very low 7950 prices were only temporary when stock was being cleared before the R9 series launch.

-There is a lot more fierce competition in the GPU space, If Nvidia had been able to offer a powerful x86 APU competitor then the price secured by either AMD or Nvidia for the consoles would have been lower.

 

[eastmen]

That... that doesn't make any sense, I will let this one go as a desperation post.

I'm speaking in terms of costs compared to the xbox one + Kinect vs the xbox one sans Kinect.

Sans Kinect your costs go down over just not having Kinect. You get the bonus of a smaller and lighter box which will cost less to manufacture and ship compared to the one with Kinect.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Anyway IHS makes little sense to me.

For example , why is the optical drive on the ps4 4 cheaper ? why is the mechanical/electro mechanical $7 cheaper on the ps4 ?

IHS assess the cost of the build to the particularly manufacturer, which would be different between Sony and Microsoft. So they'll factor in things like the cost of the drive will include patents and/or licensing fees to Sony for Blu-ray (so some of the cost if cancelled out in the accounting). Similarly if Sony number among the suppliers, Sony will obviously discount for themselves.

They're are not looking up components costs on newegg

Also now I know why sony is going broke

Sony's gaming division would have turned a healthy profit if it wasn't for the cost of launching PS4. This year marks the end of a massive multi-year plan to shed all of the unprofitable business lines keeping just business that bring money in: gaming, music, movies, medical, semiconductor production, insurance and finance etc.

 

[(((interference)))]

I think the problem here is much bigger. It all boils down to the audience. I personally think Microsoft only ended up with parity on marketshare last generation (X360 - PS3) because Sony made some big errors, namely 1.) launching late due to blue laser diods shortages and HDMI 2.) high price of the console and 3.) GPU weakness and incredibly difficult CPU architecture.

1 and 2 were crucial to their overal strategy (Bluray adaption) and 3 was something that was at some point offset by brilliant 1st and 2nd party games. Still, Bluray adaption came at a high price - it ment the console was significantly delayed so that Microsoft had a full year to continue selling its nicely designed package at a very good $399 price point. That the PS3 was able to sell at its 499/599 price point is nothing short of amazing really - and that, sticking to its guns, it achieved parity after 6 years on a global scale is IMO impressive - but shows how strong the PlayStation brandname is. The only negative point, is that they effectively lost the NA market.

Exactly, if Xbox 360 struggled to maintain a clear lead over the PS3, despite hugely favourable conditions, exactly how much hope is there of XB1 catching up to, let alone beating PS4?

Especially as MS have eroded a lot of the goodwill they built up with Xbox and Xbox 360 in the past year, pushing a lot of their core gamer audience to the Sony camp.

And now, with the removal of Kinect, XB1 is just the weaker, less popular console, with no real unique selling proposition to speak of, from a company that has courted controversy at every turn and run by people who seem to have no idea what they are doing.

I mean why exactly would people buy an XB1 over a PS4?
Just to play 'Halo' games (made by a studio who don't seem to know what makes a Halo game)?

It's not like MS can outcompete Sony with 1P exclusives either, (and they manage their studios stupidly - who buys a venerable studio like Rare for mega-bucks and then has them churn out Kinect Sports titles for the last 5 years)

So really, I don't see the removal of Kinect being a gamechanger for MS at all; the lower price gives them a short term gain but in the long-term they've hindered their prospects as devs aren't going to invest in Kinect and the great Kinect game everyone's waiting for will never get made.

Even if no one was ever going to make a great Kinect game per se, it certainly seems possible that there would be some great Kinect-enabled apps (judging from all its innovative, non-gaming uses) when MS eventually allows Win8 apps on XB1 - but they've just killed of the chance for those too.

 

[shredenvain]

I agree dropping kinect is a bad idea interference. The rest of the stuff you said seems to come from a biased place. Halo 4 was well received and sold well. Microsoft has plenty of exclusive titles being released for the Xbox One in the coming months. It doesnt matter if they are made by 1st or 3rd party studios. As far as managing studios goes Sony has laid off alot of talent lately and even canceled new ips. They both make mistakes. Alot of you guys are quick to jump on the X1 as it is an easy target right now. It is still too early for all of this doom and gloom. Were all of you expecting the death of the Ps3 6 months in? The Ps3 was in trouble but last time I checked they caught up in sales with the 360.
The price difference last gen was even larger then this one. The Ps3 is still more expensive than the 360 and is still underpowered compared to the 360. Sure there is a good chance the Ps4 will win in sales when all is said and done. Why would Ms care if it finished 2nd place as long as they are competing and making much higher profits on console sales than they did last gen. Sure non mandatory kinect sucks for alot of people but choice is always great. Does everyone really want the Xbox one to die so bad. Giving any company the industry to itself whether it be sony, ms or nintendo would be terrible for all gamers. You dont have to win sales to make money and stay in business.

 

[(((interference)))]

Well, I have been a avid Halo player from the very first game and have played hundreds of hours of online, splitscreen and system link multiplayer and Halo 4 is the only game where I've only gone through the campaign once and haven't played much multiplayer, (maybe like 20 hours - I even played far more of ODST's multiplayer).

You just have to read the B3D Halo 4 thread to see all the criticism by long-time Halo players to see why many people think Halo 4 is a departure from many of the core gameplay tenets of the series.

I'm not saying Halo 4 wasn't a good game, it was, just that it wasn't a particularly memorable Halo game and I think the series is past its prime.
No one, thinks that MS is going to leave the industry, or Xbox is going to die - we're just talking about the relative success of the two main players and why the abandonment of Kinect might not be the magic bullet people think it might be to even the sales standings.

...


To add to my previous post, it's also important to remember, that at the end of 2010 the ratio of Xbox 360 and PS3 sales was sitting at 25.4m to 15.4m in the US, 1.65 to 1. For the first five months of this gen (Nov-Mar) the ratio has completely switched to being 2.9m to 2.5m (NPD via GAF), or 1.18 to 1 in favour of PS.

That really is a big shift in MS's home market, and seen very early on too; so if MS have already fallen significantly behind in Xbox heartland (particularly as fanboys are the majority of early adopters - and in the US, Xbox fanboys should clearly outnumber their PS counterparts) they really have a herculean task on their hands to catch up to, nevermind beat Sony in the worldwide market.

Doubly so, it you consider that last gen, they comfortably won the US market but could not maintain a clear lead worldwide.

 

[HTupolev]

Well, I have been a avid Halo player from the very first game and have played hundreds of hours of online, splitscreen and system link multiplayer and Halo 4 is the only game where I've only gone through the campaign once and haven't played much multiplayer, (maybe like 20 hours - I even played far more of ODST's multiplayer).

You just have to read the B3D Halo 4 thread to see all the criticism by long-time Halo players to see why many people think Halo 4 is a departure from many of the core gameplay tenets of the series.

I'm not saying Halo 4 wasn't a good game, it was, just that it wasn't a particularly memorable Halo game and I think the series is past its prime.

It's possible to be blunt about this: for a mainline Halo game, Halo 4 wasn't all that well-received. It's the only one with a metacritic below 90, and as far as multiplayer popularity on XBL goes, it speaks for itself:

Adding to my previous post, it's also important to remember, that at the end of 2010 - around the time PS3 was getting into its stride - the ratio of Xbox 360 and PS3 sales was sitting at 25.4m to 15.4m in the US or 1.65 to 1. For the first five months of this gen (Nov-Mar) the ratio has completely switched to being 7m to 5m, or 1.4 to 1 in favour of PS.

Be careful. The "7 million PS4" was WW sold-through, and the "5 million XB1" was WW shipped. Those numbers are very much in the PS4's favour, but are neither like-for-like nor for North American in particular.

I'm under the impression that the LTD gap in North America is fairly small in the PS4's favour. Still a huge shift, but not what you're making it out to be.

But this is still early, and continued sales potential is what's important. The next few NPDs should be very interesting.