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Xbox One Costs $90 More to Build Than PS4, Teardown Shows ($75 Kinect 2)
- Thread starter Poetic.Injustice
- Start date
I'm just surprised and a bit disappointed that neither are taking a hit for launch. This is like the first generation that the heavy hitters aren't selling at a loss since when... PS1?
Imagine how much more powerful these could have been if they did take a hit... PS4 could have the rumored 3TF+... *drools*..
Imagine how much more powerful these could have been if they did take a hit... PS4 could have the rumored 3TF+... *drools*..
Maybe I shouldn't say powerful, but I'm just speculating whether the $10 (10%) more (ESRAM added, various differences in the chip) make it ">" that of the ps4
Wishmaster92
Member
By my estimates, i still think there are 3 apus inside this beast, instead of 2.
Still more expensive without Kinect.
SlipperySlope
Banned
rokkerkory
Member
Would be very interesting to see cost reduction estimates over time... whether ps4 can maintain that $90 edge... if so, that's going to be really really difficult for MS to get over.
When PS4 hits $299 and X1 is at $399 would be a really tough proposition.
When PS4 hits $299 and X1 is at $399 would be a really tough proposition.
you're not wrong, but the first ps2 model and the ps1 were WAY worse than most. those drives were faulty as fuck
Why isn't there a tread on this? if so where is it?
">" in what way though? Being more complex while also being less powerful is not an achievement MS should have unlocked.
old
Member
It looks like Sony got a better deal on many of the hardware parts. That's impressive. Being that Sony also makes phones, laptops, tablets, cameras, and smart TVs it leads me to think they may have leveraged the additional bulk buying of parts for those other devices for better deals on PS4 parts. Like they went to a supplier and said, "give us a better deal on parts for the PS4 and we'll also buy these other different parts we need for our phones/cameras/laptops/tablets from you as well." We all know you get a better deal by buying in bulk, but Sony could very well be negotiating to buy in even bigger bulk by combining supply contracts across numerous devices.
And if that is true then that only further speaks to the power Sony has in delivering great hardware at lower prices to gamers. If Sony can buy parts cheaper than almost anyone else can, then it's going to be very hard to compete with them on a hardware-to-price basis.
That's the best way I can make sense of these findings. I can't prove any of it though. I'm probably wrong. Interested to see if someone with more expertise could chime in on how Sony got such better deals than MS.
And if that is true then that only further speaks to the power Sony has in delivering great hardware at lower prices to gamers. If Sony can buy parts cheaper than almost anyone else can, then it's going to be very hard to compete with them on a hardware-to-price basis.
That's the best way I can make sense of these findings. I can't prove any of it though. I'm probably wrong. Interested to see if someone with more expertise could chime in on how Sony got such better deals than MS.
I agree. Should Sony manages to get the price of the PS4 down to the mass-market price of $300, it's game over for Microsoft. They're pretty much in a huge bind here. Either they will:
1.) Keep the price at $500 & lose most of the sales & marketshare to Sony, or
2.) Lower the price to $400 or even less than that in hopes of playing catch up to Sony in sales, while pissing off shareholders/investors as they'll take even more losses off of each Xbox One console being sold.
Like I said earlier, Microsoft's in a "Damned if you do, Damned if you don't" scenario.
Sony shopped around. I think I remember reading on beyond3d that Powervr submitted a bid, but it wasn't powerful enough. Larrabee was in serious consideration until intel couldn't hit the deliverable timeframe. Microsoft was probably happy with AMD from last gen.
Dat bargaining power of buyers
ESRAM.
well, it has the ESRAM to compensate for slower ddr3. I think ">" in such a way that it's estimated to be $10 more expensive. I don't know about being less powerful (comparing the chip alone, not the console as a whole). But there is certainly a disadvantage of harder to program.
Quote from the other article
"Necessarily, programming for such an architecture will be more complex. However, the theoretical peak performance of the two systems could be very similar."
NoMoreTrolls
Banned
No. Just fucking no. This bullshit has been debunked ad nauseam. It's all over the internet, man. Someone better than me needs to post the list again. Nibs?
Bigger more expensive and slower is the definition of fuck-up. It is like the perfect fuck-up.
Raonak
Banned
-PS4 has fast GDDR5 RAM vs xbones slow DDR3 RAM
-Xbone has 32mb ESRAM, which is to speed up their slow ram (still slower than PS4, IIRC) and at the same time creating a 32mb bottleneck, being hard to program for AND being hella big/expensive, which is why their APU costs more than the PS4's even though it's weaker.
-they have the same CPU
-PS4 has a 50% stronger GPU.
PS4 is without a doubt a more powerful console. there is no secret sauce. this topic has been discussed to death.
SwiftDeath
Member
Well Integrated Gaming Experience = Seamless Party Chat and gaming lobbies
Have you seen "The Xbox One friends and party system is horrible"?
overall network dependability = Xbox One multiplayer & store functions down as Microsoft issues status update
And please tell me how good the online experience of Forza is
Especially how it intuitively knew vinny really wanted to race by himself and not at all play with Jeff or anything
[Note the GB reference isn't a bug, the party system is just stupidly unintuitive, they start the forza section about an hour and 40 minutes in]
I will grant you better quality voice chat but yeah there is no clear objectively better online experience this gen.
LittleJohnny
Banned
So Xbone without Kinect 2.0 = $15 more than PS4!?
What a twist!
What a twist!
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
More expensive = more better
No exceptions dammit!
No exceptions dammit!
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
https://i.minus.com/ih5YwU35u5LiW.gif[/I MG][/QUOTE]
Remember they said they spent $100 million dollars on the controller ALONE!
Foghorn Leghorn
Unconfirmed Member
Not sure if serious. Yeah, they saw something, it wasn't Titanfall though, just a big chunk of expensive ESRAM.
Looks like Sony made some excellent choices with the design of the PS4 if its true its cheaper for superior hardware. Although Sony has been in the hardware business long enough to give them an edge which proves true here but then again we are factoring in the Kinect..so if that was not there the price point of each machine is much more reasonable i suppose. They "sony" have a more robust relationship with hardware vendors than Microsoft i guess and it shows. Although it still baffles me that Microsoft's console is a decent amount less powerful than PS4...considering everything MS wants to do with its next gen console.
I always wondered how much "spying" goes on between these two companies when developing their hardware for their consoles. I always looked at it as something like the Cold War Era in how the Soviet Union and America had so many spies working during the nuclear developments, space age developments,etc....i have always assumed such tactics go on with even things as little as consoles...i know that may sound a little "out there" but in my honest opinion...these types of things happen in the console hardware business...no? Just a wild guess like i mentioned but it is one that can possibly be true. I guess the reason why i think about stuff like this is that consoles usually come out somewhat similar in power with the competition...Bah maybe im crazy thinking like this lol
HoodWinked
Member
better comparison is to bundle the price of the memory, esram is there to offset for cheaper memory. xb1 is $18 less but i dont think its really worth the savings.
xbox1
$110 APU + $60 RAM = $170
ps4
$100 APU + $88 RAM = $188
xbox1
$110 APU + $60 RAM = $170
ps4
$100 APU + $88 RAM = $188
ESRAM, lower yields due to size/complexity, and more materials. Don't forget that XB1 APU is larger than the PS4, so that GPU size comparison is a little skewed looking at it 1:1. It's not really that big physically.
Still a major power difference.
dragonbane
Member
MS is making Kinect 2 on their own, so there shouldn't be patent fees this time. No tilt motor either. It should be pretty accurate.
We already discussed this to death dude. We know exactly how powerful each console is. So as long as the author didn't find any secret sauce the theoretical output is not similar. The chip in the Bone is indeed $10 more expensive than the one in the PS4. It is also much weaker than the one in the PS4. That's all there is to it. There is no magic or something we haven't discovered. The reason for why it's more expensive and still weaker than the PS4 are all over GAF and in this thread. You really don't need to speculate.
Problem is MS DDR3 will always be $60. There's not much room for cost improvement there, since it's already at the lower bound for cost reductions. GDDR5 2GB memory chips could drop 50% over the next 3-4 years, some of which would be profits for Sony, some passed on as savings to consumers.
As long as ATI doesn't screw over Sony like Nvidia did with the PS3, PS4 is going to have a nice cost scaling and price reduction over it's lifetime. That means cheaper for consumers, and getting it into more households will be easier at lower price points.
Mr Moose
Member
Gooselaughing.gif
MisterXMedia? Is that you? Keeping that dream alive.
But no, it's the eSRAM.
HoodWinked
Member
yup GDDR5 will go down in price im pretty sure GDDR3 did through 360/PS3 lifecycle. DDR3 may even go up in price as DDR4 starts to ramp up production in a couple years.
i just wanted to make the point cause people have selective blindness.
Actually, they can't claim to have saved $18, because that's only considering the RAM metric. They could have gone with GDDR5 with 12CU's still, and it would be a much smaller APU and cheaper, let's guess, 85$ because that ESRAM occupies more than 1/5th of the die. So the GDDR5 extra cost could easily be offset by the smaller APU. After all, 12CU's is what they claim to be balanced, and they can feed them with ESRAM's ~150GB/sec bandwidth.
So I have 0 amount of ideas to explain why they went with that route. Somebody really made a very, very bad decision, IMHO.
ThePowerofX
Banned
Yes! I can easily envision Mark Cerny sitting on the lavatory reading The Craft of Intelligence by Allen Dulles. Intelligence, counter-intelligence, etc. Did it ever cross your mind if the "leaked" Microsoft briefing document was unauthentic, designed to mislead the competition? You must consider these things. I bet Microsoft are sending fake bits of information through internal channels to see where it emerges. Be careful CBOAT, they're coming after you!
I can't believe the cost difference between DDR3 and GDDR5 is only a measly $28. Microsoft fucked up so badly with the architecture of the One. The sums are all fucked. The less powerful APU in the One cost $10 more than the PS4's APU, due to the ESRAM.
The massive irony is if MS had just used 8GB of GDDR5, the cost of the BOM would likely be the same. ESRAM made the APU expensive, and took away silicon budget they could have been used for performance.
The massive irony is if MS had just used 8GB of GDDR5, the cost of the BOM would likely be the same. ESRAM made the APU expensive, and took away silicon budget they could have been used for performance.
SneakyStephan
Banned
number of transistors IS the die size...
As a die gets bigger yields go down, not linearly but exponentially
MS wastes a very large amount of transistors on the 32MB of esram so they have no die space left for a beefy gpu inside the APU (unless they made an even BIGGER die which would again have much lower yields and be even more expensive)
Lots of transistors, no power to show for it , it's a failure
Iacobellis
Junior Member
Sony is absolutely taking a loss, it's in their DNA. You have to factor in more than the bill of materials.
Sony really went in with one mandate on Cerny's plate. Talk to developers, AMD, etc and determine the best course of action to produce the best gaming platform that is the easiest to develop for.
XBO seemed to have too many hands in the kitchen with specific mandates like support for a Windows-based OS with 8GB of RAM available and Kinect interface hardware reserves.
It's no wonder with the laser focus on one side and the muddled "let's make it do a little of everything" focus on the other.
SwiftDeath
Member
It really is sad but Sony with Cerny leading the way is far more reminiscent of J Allard's Xbox than modern MS could ever hope for
Obviously I love Sony's current hardware/software approach but wish MS had a similar approach, at least prioritize the game machine first
However, density of ESRAM transistor is higher than the one used for building GPU/CPU blocks. I honestly expected larger chip.
BTW, PS4's APU error redundancy is drastically better than with Xbone. PS4 has 2 CU's for redundancy that can resolve problem on VERY LARGE GPU area. On Xbone, GPU redundancy covers less than 1/4 of the chip. Plus, ESRAM transistor density can cause larger than expected power bleeding effects.
Its really no surprise why Tretton mentioned "phenomenal yields" for PS4 APU.
Iacobellis
Junior Member
Microsoft is going for the what makes them the most money. Disguise your media box as a games console and bam. Products like the Chromecast, Roku, and Apple TV belong to a niche market. Microsoft initially went with games for the Xbox and 360 was the smoothest way to penetrate the market and steal thunder from Sony.
How does media make them more money?
Because it's locked behind the paywall. If they can get everyone in the US living room to want an XBO controlling their entertainment, they will all pay MS $60 a year just for the privilege.