KBG's thoughts on future PlayStation hardware does read like fanfiction.

There will not be a PS4 Pro 2.0 and the PS5 will launch 2021 at the latest. At one point he was talking about a portable or mobile ps4.

Why? 

You can get a ps4 slim in the uk for about £200 including VAT.  That's £166 plus VAT. The shop makes lets say 8%, thats £153. Let's say the wholesaler gets 4% a unit thats £147. 

Then you have in the mix;

transport costs from the port, shipping costs, import duty costs, profit for Sony, profit for foxconn, sony costs including money towards marketing costs, R&D etc. Then add an allowance for warranty costs and repair, maybe a 5% failure rate within the guarantee period. That would be quite a low figure but possible.

All these costs add up.

I saw a report that bicycles were coming out of a Chinese factory at $20-30. That's something in a box weighing 15-20kg with a lot of metal and labour involved. Ok that would be bottom end bikes I'm sure but staggers the mind how something can be made so cheaply. Yet the same bike will probably hit walmart at $80-100 although admittedly transport costs would be much higher. 

You could be right but it doesn't seem right to me.

I would need to know what the costs are for shipping and taxes. We are talking about a product that ships hundreds of thousands units a month, it can't add on that much per unit. How much do Sony sell them for to retailers? Being high volume I wouldn't of thought that the cut per unit from factory to customer for each middle man isn't $150 worth. 

But honestly I don't really know. Just the way I perceived it. If you have good knowledge of that side of things I'm willing to take your word for it.

Note- we also have to consider the exchange rate. I don't think it's in Sony's favour. 

At launch the PS4 was found to cost around $381 for sony to make. In that cost estimate processor and ram were the two single most expensive things. Both combined amounting for almost $240 of that $381 cost.

Between then and now, the amount of Ram modules on board has been cut by half (from 16 modules to 8) and the processor has shrunk to a smaller process. These two things alone can now cost as little as $100 combined for sony.

Other gains across the board; better compononet integration, smaller cooling array, removal of the optical port, smaller PCU and smaller chassis.... all yeild gains too. 

So its my personal estimate that he PS4 probably cost sony around $180 right now to make. And its probably been costing them that since around august last year.

I am also convinced that this year we will see the PS4 come down in price to $199. Maybe even as early as E3. But definately this year, and the PS4pro drop to $299.

You are right... the per unit cost of something like this doesn't add up to much for comapanies like sony. 

Take a 40ft container. You could probaby fit at least 25k PS4s in there. The shipping cost for such a container is significantly lower for sony than what it is for say you or me. Cause it doesn't matter if you put only a pin in a container, yu pay a flat rate for shipping it. 

Now say it cost us $6k to ship that container (probbaly cost sony less then $3k for each one cause they have  contracts and ship in massive volumes), it would cost sony 0.24cents per unit on every PS4s shipped. That number will probably come up to $1 when you add moving to and from ports to stores... but again, even things like those are all under contract with other companies so would cost them way less than it would cost us.

And remember, I evcen made my calculation using the absolute worst that it would cost to ship a 40ft container, and not wht sony would pay for the same container.

Thank you. These 2 posts seem more realistic to me.

 I don't think it is all that far fetched. PS4 is using the most generic parts we have ever seen on a console. The whole thing is made of industry standard tech. This stuff is all going to become dirt cheap by 2020. A PS4 with a 7nm APU, 512GB m.2 SSD, and a case the size of the PS2 Slim, will easily retail under $199.99. Sony wants PS4 in every household, and they are going to get this thing as low as possible. I would not be surprised if they put out a PS4 without a Blu-ray drive at some point that was made directly to compete with Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV. 

You have to remember that PS4 is the only horse Sony has in the race. Bravia and Xperia are not running on thier OS, so they are just place holders to keep the Sony name floating around in the mobile, and TV markets. The ultimate goal is to build the PS4 OS and Ecosystem so big, that they can bring the OS to their other devices, and continue to drive revenue and profit growth for decades to come. They have to get PS4 in as many homes as possible, to be able to offer an app and services lineup that rivals what we see on Android, iOS, and Windows devices.

Unbelievable to me that people honestly think the ps4 costs that much to make and Sony are taking huge losses on the console. If you sell 50 million consoles at an average $100 loss that is $5 billion lost but people are estimating Sony are taking more losses than that. I cannot comprehend how anyone would think that and expects to be taken seriously. The prices Sony pays for apu's, memory chips, psu's etc are not ever comparable to retail prices and will be a small fraction of those prices. I stand by my $80-120 in near certainty this will be close to the price of manufacturing the console including boxing it, basically the factory door price at foxconn. It's actually a low margin figure but with Sony having other revenue streams with games sales, psn, accessories etc I'm sure they accept it happily.

Nope.... things like assembly is factored into the bill of materials. For the PS4 at lauch that amount was around $18. Packaging and shiping will not cost more than a combined $10 on a per unit basis and the marketing cost per unit is non existant because of how game consoles work....... those deals are done ona game by game basis as opposed to a hardware basis, its why at the end of every PS4 game ad you see a small 3 second clip that says for the players and a starting at XXX price tag on the screen.

And i can gaurantee you that selling the PS4 at €199 sony won't be taking a loss. These consoles just don't cost as much as you think they do.

I am not pulling these numbers outta my ass..... you can look here for reference. Everything is accounted for, assembly, packaging... everything. The biggest con tech manufacturers pull is making consumers think that they are getting some sort of deal by paying what they are paying for a product. These things cost significantly less than what you may think to make.

Thanks for all the replies. Enjoyed reading them