Wii U vs PS4 vs Xbox One FULL SPECS (January 24, 2014)

[Chark]

Viper1 said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

Viper1 said:

Keep in mind that my ¥59,980 figure is the retail price point for the PS3 launch in Japan.  Not the actual BOM which was much higher.   In other words, if the PS3 had a standard CPU and DVD drive, they could have sold it at that price with no loss.   What I'm saying is that they can price the PS4 at ¥59,980 and would likely break even in Japan.    The problem is that would mean it would need a $766 price tag in the US to break even.

Obviously you can't sell a $766 PS4.  So they'd have to cut the price down much lower.  You already agreed that even a $500 price tag is too high.  To go down to a $400 launch price would mean a $366 loss per US console sold.

No it wouldn't... What are you talking about? Since when did we decide on how much a PS4 is going to cost to make? Why are you assuming it would cost $766 to make? All I've said is a $100 could be made back, I've not said anything in relation to how much it'll cost at retail and how powerful it'll be, but now I will: I think it should cost $500 to make, and sell for $400. Does this clear anything up? Or is it not you who is consufed but me? don't mean for the first few questions to sound hostile... I'm honestly a little confused.

Naturally, that's not the way to go.    So a ¥59,980 price in Japan is too high.  Now you can reduce the capability of the system greatly and bring it down to a more manageable ¥39,980.  But even that would again require a $510 US price tag to break even.  So to get your $400 price in the US, they'd have to take a $110 hit per US console sold AND the capabilites of the system had to be reduced to do it.

I am guesssing somewhere around ¥35,000 for Japan which would need a $450 US price tag.   A $50 loss per console is now closer to their budget but the console won't be the powerhouse even hopes it will be.

The foreign exchange rates simply won't permit it.

I arrive at the costs I did as follows:

The PS3 in Japan cost ¥59,980 at launch.  But it cost much more than that to build because of the Blu-ray drive and the CELL processor.  So Sony took a huge loss...even at ¥59,980.

If we were to remove the CELL and Blu-ray drive, they could have sold the PS3 at ¥59,980 and broke even.   Let's say the PS4 cost is like the PS3 costs only minus the expensive Blu-ray and CELL.   That would mean they could sell the PS4 in Japan for ¥59,980 and break even.  But if they did that, it would require the PS4 to be sold in the US for $766 to also break even using the current 78.6295 Yen to 1 USD exchange rate.

Does that make more sense now?

Using that rate you are looking at roughly $40 loss for the japanese PS3. The PS3 cost about $805(I was wrong with the $880 in my other post) Everyone knows the $200 loss on US PS3s at launch but that doesn't mean there was a similar loss in Japan. Selling the PS3 in Japan without the extra cost of what Cell and bluray added would have made Sony a considerable profit if they sold it for 60k. Without cell and bluray you are looking at 20k yen cheaper meaning if they are looking at doing a similar $40 loss they could sell the PS4 for 40k yen or about $500 in the US to do the same. I'm also only concidering the added cost of cell and bluray to be $250.

You can't just assume these numbers and let them fly out there. You are missing the fact that different regions sell at different rates. The huge loss from PS3 wasn't made in Japan but in the US and then in Europe.