Tomshardware - Xbox Series X hot chips 2020 Deep Dive.

[DonFerrari]

shikamaru317 said:

drkohler said:

Again, if you do not understand how mass manufacturing works, that is not my problem. Go check the spotmarket for ACTUAL prices if you don't believe the prices I quoted. The 500 GByte drives NEVER cost $37 for either Sony/MS (back in the heydays I knew a friend who worked in a hd manufacturing plant so I knew exactly to 5 cents precision the manufacturing price of basic hds). PS: Sony and MS are still selling the same hds now as in 2013, this might give you a clue just how large those orders were initially.

Again, what you imagine or doubt is completely irrelevant, and your absolutely ridiculous idea that the PS5 ssd is twice the price of the SX just shows you have no clue about mass manufacturing, the key word here is MASS (apart from the fact that you didn't understand the simple reasons I gave why the SX ssd is more expensive than the PS5 ssd). We are not talking about R&D costs, just the costs of manufacturing the damn things.

The difference of what people think about what it costs to manufacture something, and what the actual manufacturing costs are, are often staggering. (Happened to me too, I learnt that over many years, in the various mass manufacturing areas whenever I had insight into how much I thought something costs and how much it actually costs, which sometimes was borderline shocking).

Lastly, there is a difference between manufacturing costs and production costs. That hugely depends on the actual product and can range anywhere between factors 1 and 10. My very rough guess is a $30 ssd appears as a $50-$60 product in the final tally of all costs considered but indeed I have no clue as to how Sony/MS determines the production costs of the new consoles (which is another battlefield we don't want to go into).

$37 was from the IHS cost breakdowns for PS4 and XB1 in 2013. It is an estimate, but likely a pretty accurate one, IHS tends to know their stuff when doing their technology cost breakdowns. IHS were the ones who determined that PS3 was selling for about a $200 loss in 2006.

I'm well aware that there is a huge cost difference between a console maker buying parts in bulk right from the manufacturer and retail prices, but it's crazy to think that Sony could get PS5's SSD for like 15% of what a comparably speedy PC SSD would cost at retail, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Firecuda-Performance-Internal-ZP1000GM3A002/dp/B07ZPRMLJP/ref=sr_1_30?dchild=1&keywords=nvme+ssd&qid=1597816879&refinements=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin%3A6797521011&rnid=6797515011&s=pc&sr=1-30

That one has 5 GB/s read speed and 4.4 GB/s write speed, compared to Sony saying that their Samsung SSD has a raw throughput of 5.5 GB/s. I just can't see 15% of retail price happening, maybe 30-35% of retail price.

Will definitely be interested to see if IHS does a cost breakdown on Series X and PS5 on release like they did with PS4 and Xbox One, would love to see estimates of just how much MS and Sony paid for their consoles and if they sell them at a loss or not. 

I guess you are mixing the cost of just the chips Sony buy for the SSD versus a manufactured SSD for market.