Global Hardware 1 June 2019

[Bofferbrauer2]

EricHiggin said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

I agree on 2018, but 2019 could have been possible. The main difference probably would have been the version of Navi GPU(without hardware Raytracing in a 2019 case) and Ryzen CPU(Zen 2 instead of potentially Zen 3).

PCIe 4.0 is certainly not used in a console yet (too expensive and consuming, and doubly so for hardware which supports it), the SSD might potentially be smaller (we have to see if PS5/Scarlett really use an SSD as storage or just as a buffer for the HDD) - and it would have been more expensive.

In other words, no Dreamcast scenario - more like a mix of 360 (launching one year early, giving itself a head start) and XBO (somewhat underpowered compared to the competition, but not excessively so).

Sure the hardware launching this year could have been as up to date as possible, but how expensive do you think that would be for MS and how much would they be willing to subsidize it? Would MS have paid to put Ryzen on 7nm, because if they didn't it would consume considerably more power at 14nm. Would they pay to have Navi put on 14nm? If the console performance was considered high at 14nm, that means a bigger PSU, bigger or more expensive cooling, larger console shell, etc. It wouldn't have been all that much different than the PS3 engineering and manufacturing cost as well as subsidy to try and get it to $500 by now. If they charged anymore than that, or lost the performance crown by a significant amount again due to lower input costs and lack of subsidy, it would have been Dreamcast for them.

7nm would be very much set this year. Last year would have been 14nm, and that's why I crossed that one out. I agree that doing it in 14nm would not be feasible.

I made a test built on Alternate with similar powerful hardware as is expected for Scarlett and got to a price of around 800€ - and that's consumer price. Microsoft could certainly shave off at least 100€ off of that, if not 200€. At 600€, they could sell it at $499 for the first year(s) until the prices drop for them. That was the modus operandi for gen 5-7, and the losses ain't too big to not recover them with the software sales.

Dreamcast needed about twice what it was selling for, and we're far away from that. Plus, Dreamcast got plugged because Sega was bleeding money everywhere, not just on the console. There's no chance that could happen with Microsoft anytime soon.