Why would PS4 win December NPD?

[Captain_Tom]

Aura7541 said:

torok said:

That's one big, massive advantage they have. The most expensive component on PS4 are the 16 GDDR5 modules (512MB each). Just the start of mass manufacturing of 1GB modules, fuelled by modern GPUs that won't have less than 2GB of memory and things like the GTX970 retailing at mass market price with 4GB of VRAM. The cost of each module will go down naturally and changing them for 1GB modules would drive the price down without much R&D.

And MS? Their most expensive component is their custom made APU. The embedded EDRAM makes it big. A big APU uses more silicon and you do less of them per wafer, using more expensive material. And there's another problem here. Silicon wafers have impurities and each one can cost an entire APU. If you do less per wafer, your loss ratio is bigger. They have to cut price here and that's not easy. They will cut their costs in a way slower fashion.

And there's another thing. Any improvement to the APUs litography will come from GlobalFoundries, that makes both APUs. So, improving the manufacturing of one automatically improves the yelds on the other and both will have a lower cost. The big problem is that Sony achieved a more powerful console that is cheaper to manufacture and will see its costs drop faster.

Not to mention the costs of DDR3 RAM is already low to begin with. It'll get worse when DDR4 RAM comes out because when new RAM technology gets released, the old version actually gets more expensive.

Exactly.