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Landguy said: The 6 month delay would have allowed some hardware changes. Remember, both Sony and M$ announced the basic system specs almost 6 months before launch. I think they wouldn't have bothered to change the look of the system, but they could have certainly made some memory changes. That alone would have had an impact on the overall system performance quite a bit. They also might have had a chance to change the GPU, but not as likely. The gap would have been much smaller just with the memory change. As far as a domination by Sony if they hadn't launched goes. Haven't they dominated even with the launch of the XB1? Sony will have sold close to 7 million(or more) units by May 1. The XB1 will be behind by 3 million or more by that point. If the had delayed their launch, they could have had the focus on them all alone. They would have probably closed the gap from 7 million to 3-4 million by Christmas anyway. THey would have been ready to sell the system in more than 13 countries. Also, they wouldn't be fighting such an uphill battle perception wise. They would have a lot of heavy hitters for games and the abilities of the machine would have been up to speed with more time to work on all of the software issues. It would have had a much better ability to "Wow" people with not having to fight Sony's launch PR and Christmas keeping the focus off of it's machine. They could have probably launched for $50 less too, losing $20 or so per machine vs. making $10-15 now. Again, making the machine more appealing. People don't mind spending a little more for a "newer" thing. |
The only thing they could have changed is the amount of RAM.. and it would not have made any difference.. RAM is already more than enough.. Changing anything inside the SOC or APU would have needed entire re-validation of the system... I read that Intel go with 6 months validation for all of their chips... they build 10,000 processor server farm which does automated testing on these chips.. Its not so easy and simple solution.. You are building a chip which you cannot change for 6 - 8 yrs.. so you have to be very extensive on its testing.. Plus how much extra R&D it would have added would really made it worthless effort...
Problem is not about the gap, problem would have been that all the hardcores would have shifted on PS4.. this means many of their friends who might not be that much of gamer would have obviously gotten PS4 too.. and it would have automatically become a default system of choice for multi platform gaming, and you are not realising how much terrible it would have been for MS because multiplatform gaming is the dominant form of gaming now a days.
Also they would not have been able to reduce the price, because they are already using DDR3 which was at its lowest price, Blu-Ray and Custom Built APU are also fixed cost and Kinect would have costed them same as its a dedicated pieace of hardware which no one else is using.. they might have saved some 5$ - $10 on network and other chips but i dont think it would have given them much more than that.
Last thing is that XBOX ONE releasing along side PS4 gave them much more hype and visibility. Launching later would not have given it so much hype.
Check this link to see the RAM price trend on DDR3
It could only have worked if they have totally re-vision the system and recreated a much powerful box..
