If Kinect had been optional right from the original design concept of Xbox One would Xbox One have been made more powerful?

[vivster]

ICStats said:

vivster said:

Wait what? Why would they design a console to be weaker just because of kinect? Kinect was already calculated within the price so its cost would've never affected the console specs.

If they would've used cheaper hardware X1 without Kinect would currently be below 399. What makes the inferior hardare so expensive is the ESRAM. That was the idiotic decision that broke X1's specs. Not the RAM or Kinect.

Nah the eSRAM is necessary because of the RAM decision.  DDR3 alone is way too slow.

In turn the eSRAM takes up a lot of die area, and the Xbox One has 6 less graphic cores (Compute Units), fewer texture units & ROPs because of that.

 

If they decided against the ESRAM and put in the same number of CUs the difference would've only been half of what it's now due to the slower RAM.

The ESRAM isn't even close in making up the power difference lost due to the missing CUs.