Cost of UHD Blu Ray - Is MS subsidizing Xbone S, or is Sony just milking it?

[Pemalite]

mutantsushi said:

Bandorr said:
Even if they thought it was a dying trend, they would have added it if it was just a simple "add a $15 dollar player".

Checking consumer prices for single unit orders of internal drives on New Egg, the difference for BDXL reader (not burner) seems to be $20 retail.
Pretty clear that actual cost is less than $15, probably around $5 difference.  And they didn't just simply add it in.

The cost is likely less than that.

There are plenty of PC OEM drives that just need a firmware update to enable 4k Blu Ray, so the costs of the 4k Blu Ray technology itself looks to be likely zero. You are probably just looking at higher prices between regular drives and 4k drives due to 4k being seen as a premium where extra money can be made.

Microsoft and Sony get to play with scales of economies here and also get to make special deals which side-steps all that garbage.

The main cost with the Xbox One S was actually the updated SoC, it cost development time to update the video blocks for things like HEVC support.