Will PS3 eventually pass 360?

[Squilliam]

greenmedic88 said:

Squilliam said:

Well 2012 is a pretty decent year for further revisions to the design:

Kinect needs to be revised to be simpler and cheaper to manufacture as well as to be able to cope better with smaller room sizes.

Xbox 360 needs to be revised to be cheaper to manufacture and it'd be interesting to see if they want to implement an ARM chip in the design in order to support the tablet version of Windows 8. Something like an internal PSU would be the best way to simplify the design.

They haven't actually cut the price in a while, however it makes sense and they made the best decision to keep the price high during their best sales season. It really is an open question as to whether they'll cut the price to boost sales in the slow seasons.

MS has had a good year with the 360 following the redesign and Kinect intro, but both contributed. And as much as I don't agree with the current payoffs of Kinect in terms of game applications, I'm inclined to say that Kinect more than the redesign is what drew new customers to the Xbox brand.

But yes, the Kinect sensor is ungainly and could reasonably be repackaged into something less obtrusive. A wider angle lens would partially address the space issue, although the reality is playes still need X amount of space in which to reasonably move about, regardless of lens. 

As for the console itself, I won't bother to look up the iSuppli estimates, but I'm thinking the base 4GB model probably has a BOM as low as $100, certainly no higher than $150. At this point, there isn't a whole lot more shaving to be done. An internal PSU would actually make the device larger. As much as I don't like them, they may actually be cheaper to produce (PS2 added these after the slim redesigns).

My guess would be that the base model will never drop below $99 barring end product line inventory clearing, regardless of how simplified the manufacturing process is made.  

If there's any price reducing to be had, it will likely be in bundles (all models include Kinect or all models include HDD). $199 Xbox 360 w/ 320GB HDD or $199 w/ Kinect, which was not coincidentally what a bunch of people paid for their Black Friday bundles (at a loss to retailers). 

A good revision would be to give the Kinect sensor a physical user adjustable lens like the PS-Eye, even two settings would take away 70% of the user problems faced in terms of space as often people have the room but lack distance between the couch and TV. They could sort the cost issue out by simplifying the internal board layout and making it lighter, that ought to give them a good level of materials cost savings.

The reason why I favour an internal PSU is that they can revise the console to have a smaller footprint and lower their material and shipping costs without actually changing the external physical design. Personally I can't say how much they make on a console but with little information the best guess is that any changes to what amounts to a successful design will follow the K.I.S.S. principle especially as they would also be working on their next generation console. Effectively they probably won't change the outside design until they EOL the console, whilst internally further modification beyond the next chip shrink is probably unlikely due to diminishing returns and other priorities.