They wont do it, I know Sony, they will rather lower the build quality than to take a loss.

They are not worried, people will move quicker from ps4 to ps5 than last time, this is a certainty, 100% sure it will happen.

I will bet with anyone any kind of bet that sony will outsell the xbox series X, I am 100% sure.

That is a really, really stunning thing to say (I have another word for it in my mind but we'll stay civilised). I don't know where you are living but at least in Europe (and my guess is pretty much everywhere), MS has lost a staggering amount of money if we look at the hardware only. My guess the total losses over the lifetime of the XBox could have reached anywhere from $2B to $4B.

Let's look at just a few problems:

1. XBox manufacturing. For the past few years (actually less than two years since launch), there hasn't been a week when you couldn't buy an XBox over here for around $199-$229 (and those usually have been bundles: 1-4 games, 3 months of free gamepass). There is NO WAY an XBox could ever have even been manufactured for less than that (I do not know what the store margins are/were for those units, but it's not $zero). Btw, XBoxes (not counting X1X, but that one actually required a complete redesign of the SoC, so add $80-100Mio here) are more expensive to manufacture than PS4s, judging by comparing motherboards). As a very rough guess, at the very least a $50 loss on every unit sold. For how many millions of units worldwide?

2. Kinect2. Kinect was and still is an engineering masterpiece, probably the best electronics device ever designed.

3. Software costs for the backwards compatibility program. That is an ongoing thing and I have no idea how large that group is that made the crossassembler/360os on XBox and fine-tunes it for every game they put on the gavel. Surely a few millions every year is spent on this.

One thing is absolutely sure though: On hardware, XBox is deep in the red.

Dude, the losses are irrelevant, Xbox series X will probably be a good amount more powerful than 9TF and I think it's unlikely Microsoft will charge above $500 as that would be a waste of time. Here's a list I made of verified insiders actually giving TF numbers for PS5:

Matt: 10.5TF+
BGs: 10.7-11.5TF
Jason Schreier: 10.7TF+
Heisenberg: 9.5TF or 11TF+
VFX_Veteran: 9TF
Klee: 12TF+

We have two 9TF in that list and Oberon with 9.2TF and Xbox series X likely at 12TF. Something around 11TF for $500 I think will be okey to compete will Xbox series X. They can't charge the same price as Microsoft if there's 9-12TF gap.

450 only for the parts.

There is also manufacturing, shipping and logistics costs.

Then it reaches stores and gets a retail profit marging added.

I think you should start looking for a good LoD profile picture right now haha.

Yep. People still harping on theoretical numbers. ‘Look at what devs achieved with x number of teraflops’. Never mind the bus speeds, procs (though admittedly, they aren’t very good), GPUS and their speeds, etc. I really wish more users (everywhere, not just on VGC) educated themselves on floating point operations/second. Blame the console manufacturers, for they gave the masses their new buzzword. Like ‘bits’ was many moons ago.

We’ve tried though, Pem. Give it time, maybe they’ll come around. ;P

Impossible, they cant sell you a console where you couldn't even install the game, basically they would never sell you a console where you couldn't play games on, the backlash would be too much and would hurt the brand name.

Sony has said before they wouldn't sell consoles at a loss anymore, I remember that from the beginning of current generation, so that wont happen.

There is no question at all here, Microsoft has shown they are willing to take a bit hit on hardware, just look at the xbox X for example. And Microsoft can actually afford to take a loss, Microsoft is worth over 1 trillion dollars, that's more than 15x the value of sony. If there is any gaming company capable of taking a huge loss is only Microsoft.

Microsoft will be smart, they will release a top of the range console for most likely 550 dollars, and other console for around 400-450 dollars.

The cheaper model will be close to the xbox X in power, the higher end console will be more powerful than the ps5. If they do not include the vapor cooling from the xbox X, it would mean they could easily give as the cheaper console at 400dollars, 500gb SSD, slightly weaker than ps5 but still enough for all games to look amazing, in fact the xbox X already has the power to make games look amazing if they were build from the ground up to those specs.

Sounds like an assertion.
What do you have to backup this claim?

Evidence?

Evidence?

The Xbox One is cheap as chips to manufacture, I would be surprised if they were even taking a loss.
The DDR3 Ram and the 16nm mature manufacturing process the SoC is built on and the piddly 5400rpm HDD isn't expensive these days.

The Xbox One X also fundamentally increases the average selling price of Xbox consoles, which helps with the bean counters looking at finances... And you have Gamepass, Xbox live Gold and so forth which also lets the financials look more tenable.

Hell no.

Microsoft has abandoned it's Xbox 360 and Original Xbox backwards compatibility program.

The costs are negligible, the big logistical issue was just getting the licensing go-ahead to make it happen.

Microsoft also had some hardware baked into the Xbox One's SoC that allowed for backwards compatibility to be more efficient, thus Microsoft planned this even whilst developing the Xbox One from the very beginning.

Microsoft could have potentially profited from this as those games and DLC then got thrown onto the Xbox store for sale.

Probably not as much as we think. Microsoft recouped allot of finances on the hardware front during the Xbox 360 era, especially after being hit by a $1 billion repair bill for the RROD.

Yeah. Going to side with Radek on this one...
Verified Insiders, all with different TF numbers... In short, no one knows a damn thing, not even worth discussing.

Flops also doesn't tell us how powerful the consoles are either.

PS4 BOM estimate was 20 dollar less than retail price (380 vs 399), and at that time Sony didn't know PS+ would bring so much money.

We are still 10 months away from launch so this rumored 450 cost could decrease a little and Sony could be willing to lose a little more money because it hardly would launch for like 474,99 =p

So there is chance they will release for 450 and tie our bet.

2 points I would like to make.

Wasn't the cost of RROD like 2.5B? And yes I would say today Xbox as a whole would have at least broke even all they have invested.

Yep he doesn't get tired to have 4 different "final numbers" that are different. =p

I'm part of those who don't mind paying more, €500 and even more than that... But ONLY if the power of the machine justifies it. As per the latest rumors, the PS5 should be less powerful than the Xbox Series X. Should that be true, I will not accept a higher price tag. In that case €399 is the price I'd pay for the PS5.

Should the PS5 end up being less powerful than the XBSX and should it still cost €500 or more, I'd most likely not get it, keep my PS4 and simply wait for a PS5 Pro a couple years down the line.

Who's all? I for one certainly don't expect a $800 card in $500 console.

I expect RX 5700 XT ($400 card) or it's equivalent in APU form.

Who's all? I for one certainly don't expect a $800 card in $500 console.

I expect RX 5700 XT ($400 card) or it's equivalent in APU form.