Tomshardware - Xbox Series X hot chips 2020 Deep Dive.

[DonFerrari]

shikamaru317 said:

JRPGfan said:

Xbox One X, launched at 500$.
Now every part of the Xbox Series X is more expensive, and you expect the same price?
If it happends, its because a loss is taken on each unit sale, thats in the order of probably 50-100$.

I think this is more likely to play out:

Xbox Series X: 549-599$   (50$ loss or breakeven)
Playstation 5 (disc) : 499$  (break even)
Playstation 5 (discless) : 399$ (this will be sold at huge a loss (~70$), digital returns to recoup some of it)
Xbox Series Y: 299-349$  (breakeven, not quite sure how much cheaper you can get it, by makeing a 4TF model)

*edit: Hell maybe even the discless version is only 50$ cheaper than the PS5. So 449$ instead of 499$.

Xbox One X was almost certainly selling at a small profit at $500 on launch. It released a year after PS4 Pro and still cost $100 more than PS4 Pro did at launch. Also, it got price drops really quickly, MS wouldn't have been able to afford to do price drops that quickly if XB1 X was being sold at a loss on release or even at cost. So, while Xbox Series X almost certainly has a higher bill of materials than XB1 X did, it's also heavily rumored that MS is planning on selling it at a loss.

JRPGfan said:

Its either 549$ or 599$.

Something tells me the PS5 chip is cheaper.
Its supposedly only 36 CU (with no redundency's) and the Xbox Series X is 56 CU's (with 4 disabled).
Thats gonna amount of a large differnce in the size of the APU inside both.

If playstation launched at 499$ while the Xbox Series X is 599$, that could account for why Phil Spencer resently came out and said "Selling as many consoles as Sony or Nintendo is not our approach". This could be a case of, if you want 20% more performance than the Playstation 5, you need to pay for it.

While it is true that PS5's chipset will be less expensive than Series X's chipset since it has alot less CU's, you have to remember that it has increased costs coming in other areas: 

1. PS5's SSD is going to be substantially more expensive that Series X's SSD. It is custom made and about twice as fast, faster even then comparably sized PC SSD's that are currently selling for like $250 at retail.
2. PS5's case is likely slightly more expensive than Series X's case. It is larger, meaning more plastics and metal will be needed to make it.
3. PS5 almost certainly has multiple fans to help keep it cool, since they are relying so heavily on overclocking their GPU, and each extra fan above Series X's single fan will add to the cost.
4. PS5's controller is chock full of tech that the Series X controller lacks, motors for the impulse triggers, advanced haptic feedback, touchpad, microphone, speaker, internal battery. I'd be willing to bet that the PS5 controller costs at least $15 more to make than the Series X controllers do, and since each system will come bundled with a controller, that adds to the consoles overall bill of materials.

I wouldn't be surprised if the bill of materials for Series X and PS5 are very close to one another. What will matter is if one or both of them is willing to sell at a loss, unlike this gen where both console were sold at cost at launch ($381 BOM for PS4 and $471 BOM for XB1 back in 2013). Rumor is MS is willing to sell at a loss on Series X, which is also why they reportedly delayed their August Xbox announcements into September, they clearly want Sony to announce pricing first so that they can undercut them or at least price match them. Sony meanwhile will likely be willing to sell the discless PS5 at a loss since digital software sales have higher profit margins for them, but I'm not so sure that they will be willing to sell the disc drive PS5 at a loss as well. We could very well see discless PS5 and XSX coming in at the same price, with disc drive PS5 costing $50 more.

Best estimates on BOM so far is PS5 about 450 and XSX 480 if I'm not wrong.