Your missing the point im trying to make, $399 is actually pretty spot on when it comes to pricing next gen consoles, the price of the console is not in dispute-this thing will sell.
IT is indeed a great launch price, it is also imo a great hardware. I was not not going by crazy specs when we were speculating about what manufacturers could, the ps4 is indeed more than I was expecting (more what I though were sane for Sony). It looks like the best system ever with regard to how it is balanced and the ease of development.
The issue is how much Sony losses, I do read a lot of people (usually quite a bit on the Sony side) trying to pass the use of GDDR5 as not having such an impact on price, etc.
With 4GB of GDDR5, so 16 chips of 2Gb Sony were already spending quite some more money on ram than MSFT. Now it turned out that whereas there was no official roadmap wrt GDDR5 past those 2 Gb (I remember discussing that with Alstrong a few time as I could not acknowledge that GDDR5 would not follow suit to DDR3/4 wrt to chip capacity) Sony could get its end on 4Gb memory chip. Though I don't expect those chips to be cheaper than the 2 Gb, I would think actually a tad more expensive.
If the chip scale well on @22m, starting ~300mm^2, Sony may face issue to fit a 256 bit bus.
Salvaging there chip a bit and having a 192 bit they could have end with a chip may be the size of Bonaire on the next process, that along 6 memory chips if the rumor about 8Gb memory is true. Also lower power profile, imo a great piece to have possibly quite early in this gen.
Then simply a 256 bit bus vs 192 bit one, 6 vs 8GB, be it for power consumption or costs, it is a nice saving. Sony doesn't have kinect but its tech has merits on its own, I never tried it but it is incredibly precise, the went as far as integrating a light bulb on the controller only to "cut" the Eye Toy.
But at the bottom I think that 8GB doesn't make sense for Sony, on the contrary of MSFT they don't have an OS with declining share and another they have a tough to establish (understatement of the day...
) to push to the costumers. Imo it is a useless expense.
Then there is the impact on perfs and I think it would not change much.
If sony chopped the components down to save money it would be extremely unlikely it would be passed on to consumers..they would use the savings to increase margins.
I think that at first they won't make money I would be surprised if they would have done even with the (reasonable) cuts they could have done. Whatever they saved could have been put into competing for more share and their main tool could have been a price advantage.
End result being sony makes more profit= game devs get less resources to use= games look/play worse=customers get a rawer deal=customers go buy another more compelling alternative. ..likely for more cash
No offense but that is geeky BS not what drives the mass market, what if the new kinect is a hit? Or the service provided by MSFT are really impressive (especially in US)? Or if their cloud allow for some conveniences for users and publishers (not even speaking of more advance used of the cloud)? Sony will have to fund a conter part, MSFT has plenty of resources already deployed and most likely quite some free "cycles". Sony now requires money for MP, what if lot of its user base (the non vocal ones, numerous) are pissed off at it? What if actually for the price MSFT service is better? Sony will have to give more games for free to make up for it (losing more money). Or simply looking at games, well lesser budgets or less games from their first party studios.
MSFT has put a lot of though in the software architecture of their system from the cloud integration to more relevant what we were discussing earlier (hypothetical though) they can port their virtual machine to a different architectures allow for more saving than your average shrink? No to mention MSFT still pretty deep pocket, Sony goes better but they still have some road to go before qualify as healthy.
At the end of the day, I don't see how something like "we push 200x400 extra pixels" is a massive selling point. Actually on the contrary to perceptions (of the relatives strengths of the ps360) the 360 should lead significantly over the ps3 (in sales), it doesn't so there were other factors (exclusive, free mp, price, brd, brand perception, etc.)
Once we know the price is very competitive and reasonable $399/£350..and the specifications are more than we hoped..why do we want to back track and reminiss for something worse :/
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Besides speculation on what would have been sonys best business decision instead of what they are doing now is outside the realms of this thread.
Because as I pointed whereas Cerny indeed seems to be a great guy on more than one regard, people were looking at him as he already had won this round for Sony, which is quite a stretch. From there if not to make my point but at least exemplify it, I had to go through various considerations that encompass more than one aspect, some of which could look OT.
I don't think it is, Cerny as I said most likely is a great guy but I would wait to see how its arbitration for the system fares before having some people like cheerleaders in awe in front of a charming quarter back. I said earlier that I'm not sure he is a visionary like KK was though I think it share some of its traits: it looks to be quite an enthusiast, KK was dreaming of hardware, he seems he was focused on software, ultimately they both went with pretty ambitious hardware to achieve vision. Like for KK I hope his enthusiasm doesn't have pushed to not look at the market as a whole (passing on the potential of Eye Toy), may be disregarding the saving in costs to have more room to sustain a long war, etc.
So completely on topic, as KK I hope his enthusiast won't have cut hin from more down to earth considerations.
