Microsoft Xbox One X Scorpio Price Prediction and Reaction

Despite the tasty hyperboles, everything about cooling is practically a copy of the PS4 cooling from 2013. It doesn't add cost.

The cars comparisons have no basis in reality either. An intercooler, or a supercharger, have little in common with this.

 

Scorpio heatsink is bigger than OG PS4 and PS4 Pro. If vapor chamber does not add cost why we only see it on high end videocards?

 

Because products are designed to hit a price point and you want to save every penny on actual costs under that to improve your margins. Profits have to cover R&D, fuckups, rent, utilities, employee costs, insurance, shipping, marketing. The 'profit' on a card is never that clear, companies have a ton of costs to cover.

 

this article resounding DF's article kinda explains the car comparison:

https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/04/17/xbox-scorpio-built-for-efficiency/

Now that you mention it, I wonder what would happen if they simplified the cooling fan (well, downsized it, I mean) and all that comes with that. I wonder if the R&D costs of developing a simplified version wouldn't overcome the saves in the actual physical hardware.

By that I mean is that for the fans of the digital games -downsides aside like being unable to lend games to a friend or having a friend lending you a game-, like @BRiT and some of my friends, there could be a SKU without the BR drive, which BOM is 37$ iirc.

If you add the plastics and space in the box to accommodate it, removing the BR drive saves you more money. The cooling system could be reduced, the motherboard being made smaller and so on.

 

Really tempted to change my answer now to $499 due to quality of the engineering and parts going in. MS will try to recoup those costs, they are a business after all. But being at least $100 more than your Pro competitor will be tough for them.

 

There's a crossover point where adding more heat pipes complicates the design enough such that costs might be comparable to just rolling with the vapour chamber design.

 

Is all that engineering to compensate for the lack of new AMD IP and a tangible way to increase as they say repeatedly, bang for your buck. ?

 

Exactly, they are just hyping relatively normal things to the hilt. As they should. It's what companies do, try to sell you stuff.

This is a relatively pedestrian design no matter what they try to sell you on. Nothing wrong with that, all consoles now must be fairly off the shelf designs. The (temporary) "genius" if there is any of Scorpio is just the performance targets they aimed for are high. Anybody can do that. Sony can go build a 8TF console tomorrow if it fits their plans.

It keeps striking me how you can interpret the polls results different ways:

The vast majority of respondents, 39, think Scorpio will be $449 or less. Good for scorpio!

The vast majority of respondents, 42, think Scorpio will be $449 or more. Bad for Scorpio!

 

Seems we're hovering around the $450 price which I think is about right - you then have a chunk of people who think it will be $400 (glass half full) and another group at $500 (half empty).

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._for_developers_Gamasutra_staff_weighs_in.php

after reading this article saying that they will be selling Scorpio at a loss, I am more inclined to believe it is going to be 400$. I don't expect the glorious days of X360 again, but I just wish, like in certain parts of the video, it becomes a PC/console hybrid of some kind....

 

But do you think those things add up to $100 more expensive? That's my question. If you went down the list and went item per item, which is the big bulk of the $100? I'm not really seeing it, but maybe my gauge on the price differences in the size of the soc and the heatsink are way off. RAM seems fairly obvious, and maybe a bit of cost on the pcb because of the bus, but $100 is a huge price gap.

 

One other thing I've not seen is a price breakdown on PS4 Pro to know what the margin is. Everyone is pricing scorpio based on PS4 Pro + cost differences, but that doesn't really work because PS4 Pro is probably not being sold at cost. I thought one of the main drivers of these mid-gen upgrades was it allowed pricing for a "premium" product with a bigger margin.

 

This, basically. I remember from some GPU breakdowns a few years back that a cheap heat sink - basically a lump of metal with a fan on top - could be less than $5 while a complex cooler with heaps could be in the $30+ range.

More heatpipes, more complexity, more cost. Beyond a point a vapour chamber will be relatively simpler and probably more compact. Scorpio cooler might be within just a few dollars of the Pro cooler.

If the X1S has another shrink, going for a dumb metal lump with no heatpipes could easily save $10+ off the BOM.

 

no idea.
I'm just saying, that pretty much every part is probably more expensive.
uhd drive & memory is probably $40-50 by itself.
vapour chamber is probably custom, so cost more than block of HSF.
R&D costs?

$399 - bombshell, sells to everyone, ticker tape parade, dancing in street
$450 - half expected, sells ok, reasonable price in comparison to 4pro
$499 - premium only selling to Xbox & console performance junkies untill price drops

i truly can't even guess where this is going to land

 

http://news.ihsmarkit.com/press-rel...icrosofts-xbox-one-s-brings-significant-value

I don't know how accurate this is. Was just trying to find something that broke down the bom for xbox one s. The UHD Bluray drive is listed as $33.50 vs $18 for the Xbox One's standard Bluray drive. So that's a $15 premium on its own.

They have the Xbox One S 2TB bom at $324 in August 2016. Maybe a good place to start to figure out scorpio.

 

It does add costs, but it's supposed to be negligible for a device costing hundreds of dollars. I read it's the cost of 3 or 4 heat pipes if it's the one piece variety. The arbitrary shaped, stamped ones must be more expensive, they need soldering/sintering/bonding all around.

It's just about using the right tool for the job. The higher the power density of the die (watts per mm2), the more it shifts the engineering burden on the first heat spreader.

At low density the lowest cost is a simple base plate with fins.
At medium density, pipes become less expensive than using the required very thick copper base plate.
At high density, the major problem is the initial heat spreader, pipes would create hot/cold "stripes" without a massive copper block. So vapor chamber becomes the least expensive here.

 

The 400$ 2TB XBs to me was just a milking SKU. (It´s cost was calculated to be around 350 at launch)
The realistic price would be now 250 for the 1TB, and 399 for the Scorpio.

They could still sell premium SKUs with more HDD space or a revamped Elite controller

 

How about just make it $299 and I'll buy TWO OF THEM! Come on MS!

 

Price was allegedly leaked by a spanish retailer.

http://segmentnext.com/2017/04/19/xbox-one-scorpio-priced/