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Groucho on 16 December 2008
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fulcizombie said:
Groucho said:

With multiple SKUs of the PS3, its possible that a ~$70 cut could happen on the low-end SKU, and a $100 cut on the high-end. Its been stated before that the only difference between the 80GB and 160GB models is the HDD, and the cost-to-make difference for those amounts to a whopping $3 USD.

Its in Sony's best interest (just like MS) to sell the more expensive SKUs.  

MS is not going to cut the price on the Arcade next year.  And... I'm gonna call it -- Elite model is gone for good after the holidays.  MS might cut the price of the Pro SKU by a small amount, next holiday season.

 

please explain why ms won't cut the price of the ,BY FAR EASIER to become cheaper (no hard drive), arcade model ?? It seems that we are past the "wait for x game ...." phase . The new theory is that MS won't cut the price of the 360 until 2010 while the ,fighting for survival sony ,will vastly reduce the price of the loss-leading ps3 . 2009 will be fun !!!

The primary expenses in making an Arcade model X360 are CPU, GPU, and memory, and to a lesser extent, the DVD drive and the controller.  The CPU and GPU come down in price when the production process becomes more efficient.  Last year's price drop was coupled with a CPU process drop from 90nm to 65nm, and a GPU drop from 90nm to 80nm.  This year's drop had the GPU go from 80nm to 65nm, and was really aggressive.

The price of memory hasn't changed much in the last couple years, nor has the price of DVD drives, and I would imagine the controller isn't phenominally cheaper to produce either.  MS has a 45nm CPU and 45nm GPU "combo chip" in the works.... but I have it on good authority that it won't be ready until 2010.  They've stated several times that they do not intend to revise the CPU/GPU of the 360 again, until the combo chip is ready.

Sony has managed to drop the CPU and GPU process to 65nm/65nm this year without a price cut at all (I imagine to mitigate some of the losses from previous versions of the PS3).  They have 45nm Cell CPUs on target for "sometime" next year (I'm guessing Q2).  The price of Blu-Ray drives has also dropped by a hefty amount this year.  They will probably be able to afford a pretty severe drop mid-year.