| EricHiggin said: I'd guess the SSD. |
Your guess is largely wrong. There is one factor, the cost of the PS5 ssd. This basically is 12 generic, lower speed 512GBit nvrams. If you check the semiconductor spot market (where neither Sony nor MS buys its stuff because too expensive), that's probably around $24 (on good day) - $30. That is roughly the manufacturing cost. The other factor that drives costs is the develoment of the entire I/O-system. The whole data chain in the SoC plus the front-end ssd controller (a rather "cheap" custom one as there is no dram memory involved, that sits in the PS5 SoC as sram).
How much does the second factor add to the cost of the ssd? Roll the dices, only Sony knows. If it worked the first try, add $100M, if it was a total mess, add $500M. So for 50M consoles, add $2-$10 to the ssd cost. Then add the usual bureaucracy costs and you end up around $40 for the ssd. From a bill of material costs viewpoint, this is significantly more expensive than a low-end $23 harddisk. From a shoppers viewpoint who pays $189.99 at the store for a similar pc ssd, it's dirt cheap.
