What HW cost reduction options does XB1 have?

[Lalaland]

I was about to post the following in reply to another thread but I figured it would be too OT for that thread. The basic premise for my post is Sony had to scramble to make the PS3 attractive in the marketplace and we're seeing MS do the same now

In many ways they seem to both be travelling the same road, Sony aggressively cut cost on the PS3 sku by dropping the media ports, the PS2 h/w for s/w emulation, cheaper chassis and then later the standard process shrinks. MS have aggressively cut cost by dropping Kinect 2 and I wouldn't put it past them to redesign that case to be slimmer soon, transporting all that air has to be hurting them on logistics costs alone. I don't believe it's beyond them to achieve the very impressively low noise output while also making a slimmer unit.

For me the left field idea would be for MS to drop cable integration altogether but would that really save much cost? I've no idea of the cost of HDMI PHYs but perhaps it could allow them to widen their self imposed noise ceilings if the XB1 was not on at the same time as you're watching TV.

Am I nuts here or are their other easier ways to reduce costs near term in the XB1 chassis that I've missed?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Mod note: the topic is how to cost reduce XB1 HW, and not whether MS is scrambling or similar to Sony's PS3 or what-have-you as per the preamble.

 

[BRiT]

I really don't see any sensible reductions that would have any impact on the price.

• Drop the HDMI-In port (pennies, but drops cool functionality)
• Drop the Optical Drive (dollars, but user suicide)
• Drop the built-in Hard Drive (dollars, but user suicide)
• Wait for process shrinks and produce Xbox One Slime (not available now)

For now, the only option seems to be selling the physical console at a loss and making it up on the game sales.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What about changing the audio profile, letting the machine get noisier and saving money on the heat management? Is there much to be saved from the cooling engineering that could warrant a non-silent console?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I really don't see any sensible reductions that would have any impact on the price.

Ditto.

Here's the iSuppli component cost breakdown from November. Some of these prices may have changed some, but I doubt any have changed significantly.

 

[TheWretched]

I don't believe for a second that Kinect has a BOM of 75USD. It's not cheap, no question. But that much? Not really.

Also, why the difference in price of the BDROM drive?

But either way... the table above only states a difference of 15USD if you drop Kinect. So it's fair game for either company, I'd say. MS can make a much smaller, but louder, console. Even at the current lithography, that should be easy. Wouldn't save a lot in price, though... might help offset the 15 USD diff.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I don't believe for a second that Kinect has a BOM of 75USD. It's not cheap, no question. But that much? Not really.

IHS's analysis and estimates are widely accepted across a number of industries. They are the figures that everybody uses. If you want to see a detailed breakdown of how they came up with $75 you can find that in the subscriber area. Naturally you have a pay, they're not a charity But by all means, provide your own breakdown of the Kinect and cost the technology and BOM.

Also, why the difference in price of the BDROM drive?

Because Sony are a leading member of the Blu-ray Disc Consortium and, as such, they'll get breaks on licensing that Microsoft do not. Add in that Sony likely buy a ton of BD-ROM drives for other products so I buying this in crazy volumes which yields further savings. Microsoft do not.

It's this depth of analysis that IHS undertake that makes their figures generally trusted and widely used for comparison.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't believe for a second that Kinect has a BOM of 75USD. It's not cheap, no question. But that much? Not really.

This has come up repeatedly in discussion with advocates such as eastmen doubting the expense of Kinect. Yet it's removal has facilitated a $100 difference. It's one of the most sophisticated ToF sensors ever devised, outperforming multiple far more expensive sensors, and that has to come at some cost. Die costs aren't just a matter of lithography * area.

Taking iSuppli at face value, MS spent $28 just on building the box. A little of that will be things like HDMI in, but all round they seem to be spending more to achieve the same thing. As such, they should be able to match Sony's design and get the same costs (eg. same mechanical/electromechanical choices). I don't know if Sony make some savings for being a HW company or not.

But when all's said and done, the savings aren't really there to materially achieve a cost advantage while avoiding a loss leader. The best they could have done was remove Kinect, which they did.

 

[McHuj]

Here's an article on the 360 cost reduction from 2006.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20061120132150.html

MS allegedly reduced the cost of the 360 in one year by 40% without die shrinks so there have to be ways to achieve cost reduction now as well.

 

[MrFox]

Every part that should be similar or less expensive, is actually more expensive on the XB1. RAM is obviously less, but even here, it feels it should have been a bigger difference.

- Sony makes it's own drive, while MS bought one from a supplier, which needs at least a little profit. The bluray licenses are also less for Sony.

- For mechanical, case, integration, manufacturing, XB1 wastes a lot of material and it's a primitive design that can be improved. This is where Sony had a significant edge at launch.

- The Power supply being external requires high-current connectors, cable, a fan, and more regulation. So it ends up more expensive despite being lower power.

- The XB1 SoC is bigger.

- The Motherboard seems to have a lot of glue logic, and a crazy amount of bypass caps under the SoC.

- More connectors on XB1

There's maybe $25 that MS can drop with better integration skills to keep up with Sony in cost effectiveness. I'm also guessing the RAM will drop by at least $20, increasing the difference between DDR3 and GDDR5. For everything else, both MS and Sony will have the same opportunities for cost reduction. So there's a potential $50 advantage for kinect-less XB1 in the near future without touching the SoC.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I don't know if Sony make some savings for being a HW company or not.

They should be, it was one of the things Kaz Hirai said he was going to change when he became CEO. Previously each business arm of Sony operated separately, the TV division would source HDMI connectors, the Vaio division would source HDMI connectors, the PlayStation division would source HDMI connectors and so on. Kaz Hirai was going to consolidate procurements across Sony Electronics so leverage volume buying. It's common sense but Sony weren't doing it.

If this is done, every component in PS4 that is used in volume in other Sony products should be cheaper for Sony than it is for Microsoft. Sony probably also pay less to FoxCon given how much stuff FoxCon make for Sony compared to what they make for Microsoft. Volume savings and discounts at every turn.

Incorporating the PSU would be a good start because you're now building one product in a case instead of two separate products in two cases needing a connector and cable. They could save $10-15 just there, then you have smaller retail boxes too.

- Sony makes it's own drive, while MS bought one from a supplier, which needs at least a little profit. The bluray licenses are also less for Sony.

Panasonic drive in mine.

 

[fehu]

An Xbox On[e]line without kinect, the hdmi-in, and the bluray, and with an internal power supply and less expensive internals and chassis?

 

[function]

Mr Fox made some good suggestions. I'd add:

- Tray loading lunk drive instead of sexier slot loading thing.
- Copper core aluminium lunk cooler instead of heatpipe thing (similar to Shifty's suggestion)
- Integrate all logic (like video processor/overlay chip) into next SoC
- Switch to 8 x 1GB DDR4 when that becomes cheaper than 16 x DDR3 (2016?)
- Release an SKU with a cheap ass 120 GB SSD in instead of a more expensive HDD, and rely on users to juggle or use an external USB drive (like Sony and Nintendo are currently doing).

The motherboard is big and looks messy. The case is huge and heavy. The massive external PSU seems wasteful (not to mention it needs it's own cooling, extra cabling, adds casing and weight and volume of its own).

Extreeemxx edition: cut to 6GB of RAM when you move to DDR4, reduce OS to 1GB reserved when running in "full on game mode". Without Kinect running motion capture simultaneously 1GB would still be a metric fuckton to run background OS, Skype, Facebulk, background download, video capture, and whatever apps the government uses to spy on you while you game, naked.

 

[function]

Also:

Shrink the processors in Kinect, and allow it to be passively cooled. Source the standard camera and microphone components from Nokia. Lower power would allow it to operate over standard USB3, meaning no custom Kinect cable needed. Meaning no Kinect port needed on the back of the Xbox, meaning no additional power routing and management inside Xbox for powering Kinect.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

- The Motherboard seems to have a lot of glue logic, and a crazy amount of bypass caps under the SoC.

Wouldn't Sony using more ICs add a development cost not visible in the BOM? That is, MS's more expensive build came at the savings of not having to design a few ICs to do the job more cleanly. Is that an expensive undertaking, or did MS have some other reason to go with 'rough and ready'?

 

[Boxercide]

Why is DDR4 going to cut costs?

 

[function]

Because over time it'll become cheaper than twice the number of chips of a deprecated type.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Wouldn't Sony using more ICs add a development cost not visible in the BOM? That is, MS's more expensive build came at the savings of not having to design a few ICs to do the job more cleanly. Is that an expensive undertaking, or did MS have some other reason to go with 'rough and ready'?

That's an incredible complicated question. But a great one

In terms of manufacture, testing and failure/reliability, fewer individual components is almost always a better proposition unless the cost of a single more-complicated IC is more than the sum of the individual components or introduces other variables like power or heat considerations.

Even with these factors, you're getting faster assembly and testing and generally better reliability - all things being equal. A board with 100 components takes longer to assemble and test than a board with 50 components (robot or human) whether robot or human assembled, and Sony and Microsoft basically hiring FoxCon production line time so less time means less money.

Whatever it cost Sony to design a few custom ICs, it's a one-time cost. We used to do this a lot in aerospace, spending a lot of time and money on simplifying a board design so that production is easier. And the more your produce, the more you save over the long haul.

I can't answer your question, but I hope this helps.

 

[Grall]

DDR4 is said to remain rather costly for the foreseeable future, and DDR3 is so entrenched in the computer industry it's not going to be "deprecated" for a LOONG time.

 

[steveOrino]

Nuke the Kinetic port. Integrate it with a USB port since the current port does nothing but waste money since Kinect isn't in every box.

Nix that lone USB 3 port on the side

Get rid of the IR hardware

Integrate that external speaker under the outer housing or nix it.

Get the Wifi board onto the MB

Shrink the damn chassis, (seriously why is it so big for what is essentially laptop tier parts) so much wasted space.

Internalize the PSU (a real head scratcher when you consider how gigantic the case is and that its supposed to be like a price of A/V equipment) I certanly dont know of any a/v equipment that expensive with external PSUs... even far more powerful HTPCs have internal PSUs.

Make the internal storage user upgradable without voiding warranty. I mean really, its so easy to fill 500GBs and you are screwed with using external drives.

The mainboard could use massive cleanup but the area around the APU is still going to have a snake pit of trace routes.