| Intrinsic said: The APU is the most expensive thing on that board as far as sony is concerned. But these things doesn't really cost that much to actually make. Haven't you ever heard this saying about chip manufacturing? "The first chip costs $2B, every chip after that costs $10". As it stands, sony is paying AMD way more than that chipset actually cost to manufacture, but thats necesary for a certain number of million chips. After that AMD will pass some of those savings over to sony. Thats usually how these things work. So even if manufacturing processes haven't been improved, its possible for AMD to rediuce what sony pays them by $25. And with MS going insane, sony weren't stupid for going insane and dropping the price like they did. If they didnt they would have completely lost last gen. And if MS drops price to remain competitive then thats not stupid either.There is really no resason not to. And if anything, with how quickly MS dropped the price of the XB1 (if we can actually call it a price drop), it just goes to show that MS is very ready to drop prices if they have to. |
Actually these things do cost a lot to make ... Not only are the initial costs high but you have to account for the fact that you need to put a fab in full capacity as it will end up costing just as much if a fab isn't in full use. That statement only holds true for smaller chips like entry level GPUs or SoCs and such but with a fairly sizeable die like the PS4's APU I would expect it to be atleast $70 to manufacture.
I highly doubt AMD are profiting a whole lot since they just ended up posting another loss recently. It's probably TSMC or globalfoundries that are demanding that much as they are the ones handling the expensive chip manufacturing.
Microsoft are smarter than what you give them credit for ... Plus I still think Sony lost last gen as they had incurred a huge debt over time.
