@Silent_Buddha
You are simplifying things way too much.
What makes you think that the cots of 4GB won't affect the price of the XBO?
Do you really think that XBO is going to stay at $500 with 50% more RAM?
Do really think MS is going to add 4Gb for free and reduce even more its profit percentage per unit?
Eh? I wasn't talking about the price impact on the Xbox One. Only answering a question as to how much 4 GB of DDR3 could cost.
Whether MS wants to increase the BOM anywhere from 5 to 20 USD (I think it's likely closer to 5-10 USD for 4 GB of DDR3 chips in the large quantities that MS will be contracting for.) is entirely up to whether they think there is a tangible benefit to increasing the memory such that the result in performance, features, graphics quality in games, or whatever are enough to increase sales over an 8 GB Xbox One over the lifetime of the console to justify the increased BOM.
At 5 to 20 USD. That represents a cost of between 500 million to 2 billion USD if 100 million consoles are sold. So it'd have to be a fairly compelling case for it in order for that to happen. And that represents a cheap upgrade.
Sony going from 4 GB to 8 GB of GDDR5 incurred a far larger cost over the lifetime of the consoles, but in that case the argument for 8 GB of memory was compelling enough for them to eat that cost as otherwise they risked a potential visual deficiency versus the Xbox One in some cases even with more powerful hardware.
For the Xbox One the argument for 12 GB versus 8 GB of memory isn't as strong. But then again the increase to BOM is also quite a bit less.
Is it possible, certainly. Is it probable? IMO, I don't see the chances as being very high for 12 GB of memory, but I can also see why they may think they need it. Still, if I were a betting man, I'd bet on 8 GB being the final configuration. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was 12 GB. I just wouldn't bet my own money on that happening.
Regards,
SB