"I love the things the Xbox team has done with TV and kinect integration. It creates a very futuristic experience and me and my family just love it. It has been a long time since we first designed the Xbox One, and the market has changed. I couldn't say what, if anything, the olds team would have done differently. I know they have a lot of very smart people in the Xbox division and they know what they're doing. I know the new team has poured everything into this box, just like we did. It's a great product and I wish them every success.
Well first of all they would have put gamers first, not TV and Kinect. All of XB1s hardware short falls stem from the need to have 8GBs of Ram and to have profitable hardware out of the gate. In the end the hardware isn't that profitable and the competition (Sony) ended up the cheaper/ more powerful system. Also 90% of Kinects praise comes from the voice navigation, which would have been alot cheaper without the camera
Well first of all they would have put gamers first, not TV and Kinect. All of XB1s hardware short falls stem from the need to have 8GBs of Ram and to have profitable hardware out of the gate. In the end the hardware isn't that profitable and the competition (Sony) ended up the cheaper/ more powerful system. Also 90% of Kinects praise comes from the voice navigation, which would have been alot cheaper without the camera
I started thinking about everything that I'd change and then realized that I'd end up with a PS4.
Ok to be a bit different I'd go with your audio only version of Kinect. Without the need to transmit video, I'd put the Kinect microphones in a wireless package that could be placed nearer to the user for even greater clarity and headset free operation.
I'd put two additional buttons on the underside of the controller to allow more button presses without taking your hands off the sticks. I'd also combine that with an OS level config utility that would allow a per user per game controller customization. This customization would work for every game without the need for developer support.
Probably went away when all the reports of grinding disc drives appeared for XBO. Both systems ended up with launch issues hardware-wise so there was no "gate".
Probably went away when all the reports of grinding disc drives appeared for XBO. Both systems ended up with launch issues hardware-wise so there was no "gate".
When you sell a million units even a small percent that are defective will seem large. Considering that the day one buyers were probably far more likely to post on gaming forums than the general public, you can see how this effect would get magnified.
Having both Consoles to me the Xbox One feels like it is worth the price much more than the ps4. The x1 gives you a sense of something new and futuristic while the ps4 feels like more of the same with shiny graphics.
How the mighty have fallen, back then when they were a respectable challenge to Sony.
Now?
Shit this might lead to Sony becoming the main system with no competitor.
We don't want that, no one wants that. Nintendo better step their Console game up. We can't have Sony relaxed. If Sony is relaxed all gamers(including me) who own a PS4 will suffer.
Regarding the "Sony must've gotten better deals" comments, that's not really how these estimates work. If they knew the exact price Sony or MS negotiated for a component, it would be a report, not an estimate. That's why they list $37 for both hard drives; that's the industry standard price for buying those drives in bulk. Now, it's entirely possible that Sony are getting drives for $35 while MS pay $39, or vice versa, but the point is they're both probably paying roughly $37.
"At an estimated cost of $110 — about $10 more than the AMD chip found in the PS4 — it’s the single most expensive component in the system."
doesn't this alone proves that the single most expensive component in the system of xbone is more powerful than that of the ps4.
Reason being that all these costs are estimates. They must seen something in the chip of xbone to estimate that it's $10 more expensive than the one in the ps4.
First, you might want to familiarize yourself with how chips are made. This article explains it well, and this Wikipedia entry explains exactly how the interconnects are made.
In a nutshell, it works sorta like silkscreening. Most of your effort goes in to creating the screen itself. Once you have that made, you can basically stamp out shirts all day long, regardless of how simple or complex your design actually is; you just slap the paint on and move on to the next shirt.
Because of that, chip manufacturers basically just charge a flat rate per wafer. It doesn't really make much difference whether a chip has 3B or 5B transistors because again, they're just slathering the wafer with goo and letting the screen do all of the work. Let's say they charge $15,000/wafer for chips at this process node.
Near as I can figure (using this calculator and mostly default values) Sony are getting 161 dies per wafer, while MS are only able to fit 154 dies on the same wafer. That alone will mean that MS is paying more per die, and again, it doesn't really matter if they have more (or less) transistors than Sony, because that's not how they're being charged.
Where complexity comes in to play is in yields, which is how many functional chips you actually get out of every wafer. Going back to our silkscreening analogy, stamping out shirts is a simple enough process, but problems are going to happen. Perhaps your screen is a little clogged and not all the desired paint is actually applied to the shirt. That's a common occurrence, both in silkscreening and lithography. If the transfer is bad enough, that shirt will just go straight in to the garbage. What determines whether it's so bad it needs to be thrown away? The complexity of the design. If you were just silkscreening a giant smiley face, it would need to be pretty fucked up before you were unable to sell it. On the other hand, if your design is the full text of the Constitution, you don't need to be missing much paint before the shirt is illegible.
So because XBone's APU is more complex, it's going to be more vulnerable to such errors, meaning any given mistake is that much more likely to hit a critical part of the chip, which means lower overall yields. So maybe Sony can hit an average of 93% of their chips actually being useful, while MS can only manage 88%. That means that Sony can use 150 of the 161 chips on their $15K wafer, while MS can only use 136 of the 154 chips on their $15K wafer. That works out to $100 per useful chip for Sony, while MS are shelling out an average of $110 for their chips.
"Okay, but don't those extra 2B transistors make it a lot more powerful?" Not really, no. Not in this case, at least.
The transistors themselves can perform one of two functions; they can be used for storage (caches, eSRAM, etc.) or they can be used for logic (figuring stuff out), and the latter is where your "power" comes from, but nearly all of those extra 2B transistors went to the eSRAM, not logic. The eSRAM can't make the chip more powerful because it doesn't do any math; it's just a box to keep data in. To add insult to injury, not only does the eSRAM not make the chip any more powerful, MS needed to cut out ~33% of their GPU logic transistors just to make room for it on the chip.
"Why'd they 'need' to do that?" Because modern GPUs chew through lots of data in a very short time. So much in fact, they made a special type of memory just for GPUs which pumps out data at double the normal rate. The problem is, the XBone doesn't have that kind of memory; just the slow stuff we use for regular CPUs.
So that's where the eSRAM comes in. It is fast enough to keep the GPU properly fed, but it's also very, very tiny; just 0.4% of the total memory on the system. So while the eSRAM can feed the GPU, it can only do so in very short bursts. Because of that, the already shrunken GPU can't even operate at peak efficiency. So while on paper the XBone's GPU has ~66% of the output compared to PS4, in practice, it will never even reach that 66% performance level on any but the simplest of games — something like Terraria — and that's why Ghosts pushes less than half as many pixels to the screen on XBone.
I believe assembly is included, but boxing and shipping aren't, which will favor Sony, since the packaging is so much smaller. (They spend less on materials, and can fit more units on a palette.)
Most of that $60 price actually goes to the retailers. I'd be surprised if MS were pocketing much more than $10 per spare controller by the time they get them packaged and shipped. That means they'd need to sell 10M of them just to break even on the R&D!!
If I was a mainstream consumer I would see the knack demo vs forza and think the xbox had superior hardware, and would assume that is why the one costs more.
I'm somewhat disappointed that both consoles are slightly cheaper to produce than what they are sold for in stores (especially in €. Economical for them of course, but it felt so nice buying a PS3 at launch, getting advanced HW like a BD player for much less than the production costs.
Did it also seem conspirational, when the PS3 was the target of constant negative coverage during its early years? If anything, those sources that now downplay the differences seem conspirational in comparison to what their stance was before.
Did it also seem conspirational, when the PS3 was the target of constant negative coverage during its early years? If anything, those sources that now downplay the differences seem conspirational in comparison to what their stance was before.
Having both Consoles to me the Xbox One feels like it is worth the price much more than the ps4. The x1 gives you a sense of something new and futuristic while the ps4 feels like more of the same with shiny graphics.
To me the biggest takeaway here is that Microsoft somehow got themselves into exactly the same situation as Sony did last time (well, not quite AS bad I suppose) and they will need to do the same thing as sony in order to compete- that is a console redesign as fast as possible to shave some of those costs down as much as can be.
PS4
Console: $348
- CPU/GPU: $100 more efficient production due to no esram
- RAM: $88 the GDDR5 gamble paid off, it could easily have cost double this
- Power Supply: $20 going internal means no casing/cord required, thus cheaper
- Optical Drive: $28
- Hard Drive: $37
- Other: $75 23$ less because of it being about half as big , less raw materials
Controller: $18 probably the extra 3 bucks is entirely due to the touch pad
Box Contents: $6 smaller box means smaller packaging, internal PSU means fewer cables
Assembly: $9 - Sony's box is a bit smaller , shipping is likely also cheaper because of this
Total: $382 , not tossing a camera in the box is the biggest save on the chequebook.
So, that brings us to the xbox one below- , given what I just wrote about the sony breakdown I'll toss in some theories about how to cut costs on the xbox.
Xbox One
Console: $357
- CPU/GPU: $110 - nothing short of a switch to a smaller fabrication process will cut costs here and that's at least 2 years off. Gambling on ESram hasn't done them any favors. (-25$ maybe ? at least 2 years off though)
- RAM: $60 - I'm surprised ddr3 is actually this much money , given the performance difference going to GDDR5 I assumed it would be half the cost. Either way , ram prices will likely continue a downward slide but they must be close to the bottom given that ddr4 is coming next year. (-10$ a year down to 30$)
- Power Supply: $25 - a physical redesign of the console that creates an internal power supply would shave at least 5$ off as the ps4 demonstrates above.(-5$)
- Optical Drive: $28 -
- Hard Drive: $37 - storage media drives will both remain fairly constant. For hard drives, the change will be going from 500GB to 1TB for the same pricing. Optical Drive will likely only cost less if slot loading drive is switched out for a top loading drive.(no change)
- Other: $98 - As stated above, reducing the physical size of the console will mean smaller parts, less material and lower costs.(-30$)
Controller: $15 - probably can't go much cheaper then this without making a less reliable and shittier controller.
Kinect: $75 - pulling Kinect out of the box seems like a no brainer to everyone on earth outside of Redmond , Washington at this point. (-75$)
Box Contents: $10 - redesigning the system with all the above points would lead to a similar cost reduction to Sony's current situation. (-4$)
Assembly: $14 - likewise, making the thing smaller and easier to build would reduce assembly costs. (-5$)
Total: $471 Current
2014 redesign : -129$ = 342$
Obviously the downside though, even if they engineered a box that could do everything above that would cost tons of R&D money so even though the above illustrates a way for them to still not lose money at a 349.99$ price point (which is where I feel the xbox one should be priced) the extra R&D work would lose them a crap ton of money.
If they did make a smaller unit though and then in 2015 simply placed the smaller APU inside of it they could probably manufacture and xbone for just 307$ that year at some point.
It's going to be an interesting road ahead for MS , the marketing people were likely expecting that 499.99 price to stick until they could sell 10 million consoles with the smaller system outlined above coming for christmas 2015 but still including kinect and being sold for 449.99. It's as though they were anticipating sony was going to lie down and die this generation.
