Per usual the Xboss says something simple and logical and it’s twisted to suit agendas. When he says his division has a different approach and goal than the typical “we sold more consoles than Y or Z”, that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to TRY to sell more consoles than Y or Z. Of course they’re still going to TRY to offer a product that as many people as possible want to buy. And that can easily include taking a loss on hardware, because they’re going big on digital and services and can make up losses there.

The way some of you talk, when he says they don’t need to outsell the other consoles you make it seem like you actually think he wouldn’t mind being a distant third again. Why would anyone in his position feel that way? Why do people get weird when Papa Phil talks?

So do you think Series X will outsell Switch and PS5?

you do exactly what he claims everyone else is doing with Phils statements, fully overboard LMAO

Oh, if they announce a $399 or $499 XSX I fully expect him to call Phil a liar.

I asked a direct question that he can say yes or no, I'm not distorting his words without he being able to have a say on it.

Hold down your horses warrior. But then do you think Series X will or not?

Guys to me it’s obvious that as much as Xbox is gonna try next gen the brand power just can’t compete with Sony’s, especially in Europe and Asia. I always viewed Phil’s selling console comment as a preemptive way to save face. You can’t take the L if you say before hand your mission is getting more subs then console sales.

On the other hand, Xbox needs to sell the most consoles they can for a bigger slice of 3rd party revenue, as well as consoles being the #1 source of GP subs.

This way Xbox can “win” even if they don’t win by traditional means.

Lol at all those price guesses.

The PS5 ssd is behind a SoC internal circuit which drives a proprietary controller. The actual ssd sits in front of the controller. We know it consists of twelve 64GB NVRam chips (moderate speed, nothing fancy) either on a separate pcboard, or even directly soldered onto the mainboard. No Dram chips.

The pcboard, if there is one, is 50c. To "guess" the price of the chips, you simply take a look at the semiconductor spot market and check the memory prices. These are fluctuating wildly by the hour, currently between $2 and $4 per chip. Of course, Sony doesn't pay these prices, the spot market essentially is a broker for smaller orders (from people who do not have direct access to the manufacturers).

So for the PS5 ssd itself, we roughly get 12*$2 + 50c + 50c (assembly) + <=$5 all other stuff involved = around $30.

The fact that you pay $100 for a "slow" ssd in a shop is completely irrelevant, as your ssd went through several sales stages (it's basically the ink cartridge principle, you pay $60 for a printer and $50 for a replacement cartridge).

The X1X ssd is a different thing. It is of higher capacity, entirely custom made, so MS pays whatever Seagate(?) wants. But we can safely assume that is (a little) more expensive that the PS5 ssd, for those obvious reasons.

It does make for great PR though, that Sony/MS can advertise "We have a $200 ssd in every console".

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).

Like Phil said, if their main goal was to sell as many Series X boxes as possible, they would have focused on Series X exclusives that would showcase the hardware and boost console sales. Instead, they'll be releasing all their exclusives on Gamepass and design them so anyone with a pc and Xbox One can play them too. 

MS knows their approach will make Series X more of a luxury optional upgrade than a necessity. That's why they'll likely not market it as a mass market console but as a niche product with a niche price - for those who absolutely demand 4k/120fps and are willing to pay a premium for it (like the X1X). Like I've been saying for months, the 4Tflops Series S will be their mass market consoles and the official successor to the Xbox One S.

Will Series S sell big numbers? Who knows, but in the end it doesn't matter to MS if they'll become 3rd again as long as people subscribe to GP/Xcloud. They have the Microsoft Store pre-installed on practically every pc on the planet, so that's what they'll obviously want to tap into and grow subscription numbers. That, and getting GP/Xcloud on mobile phones, TV's and likely ps5 and Switch down the road if Series S sales tank. 

HD estimate - false

Ram estimate - false (again, if people only had looked at the spot market and drawn the correct conclusions...)

Kinect2 estimate - absolutely, laughably, unbelievably, moronically, stupenduously false. This line alone disqualified this company's entire guessing at that time. The least thing they could have done is to dissect a Kinect2 and ask semiconductor people what this and that chip likely costs, guesstimate R&D, and sum it all up - they apparently did none of that and simply used a "Oh it's prettier than Kinect1" line of pricing thought. Hint: Kinect2 was VERY expensive (this was actually confrmed by an MS engineer - I really should have saved that quote for eternity).

The reason for the huge loss on the PS3 is entirely due to recouping the investment in BR development (and building factories, paying out the inventor of the diode, bringing the experimental diodes that worked in the lab to mass manufacturing, etc, etc). The entire BR bill was offloaded to the console business (which was one of the very few divisions that made profit at the time, and actually required also the br diode - hence good excuse to do it). Recouping within a relatively short time (i.e. few years, not decade) frame drove the division into the deep red (there was something else happening in the PC/Laptop group that was offloaded into the console division which drove it even deeper into the red).

This is all history and this discussion had been beaten to death then, but apparently still nothing has changed since. Maybe some day someone onsite will write a good book about it..

Now your next question will be "If you are such a smartass and know it better, why don't you tell us the real numbers?". I can't because I have no idea how the cost of manufacturing a console translates into how much it costs to PRODUCE a console.

All I see is a flow of posters stating "If the BoM of material is $400, then they can sell it at $399 with a small loss". Complete nonsense, the BoM of a PS5/SX is just a piece of the cake called "The Product PS5/XS". And particularly at the start of a new cycle, there usually is a big gap between manufacturing something and producing something.