Whats kinda crazy is the die sizes between the two.

(xbox) 408mm^2  vs (playstation) 280mm^2 

PS5 is 260mm^2 in the slim, so PS6 at 280mm^2 is a ~7% increase in chip size.
Xbox Series X is 360,4 mm^2, so new Xbox console is ~13% increase in chip size.


However the differnce between the two new console is ~46%  (408mm^2 vs 280mm^2).

Like a digital PS5 can be had for 499$.
Maybe Sony is able to make the PS6 digital at 550$ release.... while sold at a tiny loss.

Can you imagine if the new Xbox console comes out at like 900$ or more? 

The typical mom in store, looking for a console for their kid, is getting a PlayStation.
A 350$ difference between two consoles sitting next to one another on a store shelf is gonna have some kinda effect.

And yes, the Xbox will likely be more powerfull than the PS6 and the difference might be more drastic than the PS5 vs Series X...
but honestly at these high resolutions, will the avg consumer care? if the PS6 runs a lower resolution?  Look at how successful the Switch 2 is.

Xbox will need that hybrid pc push, to sell these units.
Otherwise it won't make sense.

Doing some quick math, using a wafer price of $20,000 with a low-ish defect rate and assuming both dies are square, that yields an average cost of $190 vs. $118 per good die per wafer, a $72 difference in price.

Of course, the larger die comes with added... everything else.

Did you use one of those calculators where you input defect rates and such?
Because I remember costs not scaling linearly. The bigger the dies get the price goes up by alot. 

Anyways its not just the die size and cost of that, the heat is going to be more (like ~250w vs ~350w) and thus the case size and cooling solutions,
everything is impacted.  Also if you want it to function as a hybrid pc, it might need more ram... like a list of small things.
If its dual booting, it might need to have 2 OS's installed on the hard drive, which takes up space ect.

Your point is that it shouldn't be drastically more than the PS6 in costs?

I just took the price of the current Consoles on the market, and added the increases to them.

PS5 digital @499$ + 7% bigger die = 533$
with new die nodes likely more expensive + new tech + inflation lets say = 550$.




Xsx digital @599$ +13,4% bigger die = 680$

with new die nodes likely more expensive + bigger heatsinks/case/diskdrive/ram sizes (pc hybrid) + inflation + not willing to sell at a loss because other store fronts will eat into profits = ~800$+ 


Even MLIS is saying he is sure this thing will be over 800$.
That's why I picked 900$..... suppose its made by a 3rd party like Asus that also want to make a profit selling these things.
Just the nature of things.

It already factors that in. For example, in that estimate, the chance of a good die per candidate was about 10% higher for the smaller die. You can get that difference to be much higher with different defect rates, but I assume N3 will be reasonably mature by 2027 after ~3 years in the market.

As for the second point, I agree.

Well, "PC" that is cheaper than PC of equivalent performance, where, aside from all the XBOX stuff, you can have all your Steam, GOG, EPIC and other libraries. I think they're most likely aiming for both premium console market and PC market, all in one with that hardware.

yeah if it's a dual boot pc they can avoid the tariffs as consoles are classified as "luxury" items and pc are not subject to tariffs.  

The irony is that even with more powerful hardware, games may very well run better on the PS6 just cos it will be the lead platform and get the lion's share of resources and optimization due to offered a bigger install base, as we saw this gen where games tend to run better on PS5 despite the Series X being stronger on paper.

Optimization is not a significant advantage for a lead platform when the architecture is near identical. Older consoles (PS3 and older) were radically different architecturally, so being a lead platform made pretty big differences. This is no longer the case between Xbox and Playstation, where architectures are too similar and game engines are very scalable/flexible.

PS5 beats the Series X because it has quite a few advantages (even on paper). Depending on engines and how a game is designed, PS5 often produced better results because it's simply superior in some scenarios. It's the smallest gap between two consoles launching at the same time. PS5 was wildly underestimated before launch by TFLOPS lunatics.

Xbox's next highend hardware (I suspect they will have a range) seems to comfortably beat the PS6 in all regards (gap seems larger than PS5 vs Series X, but possibly smaller than PS4 Pro vs One X), so unless PS6 has a game changing feature, optimization should not really help it close the gap in 99% of cases. But then again, if the next Xbox is indeed just a fixed PC and goes to sell anysmal numbers by console standards, optimization may return to being a relevant Sony advantage.

Games are designed around leveraging those PS5 strengths as its the lead platform, less so Series X because devs have limited time to optimize and a platform that comprises say 50% of your audience will get more effort than one that is only say 20% of your audience. PS5 also apparently has a more efficient API.

In terms of sheer compute throughput though, Series X is the superior piece of hardware.

Developers don't optimize their games fully to any platform these days. They develop with the intent of supporting as many hardware as possible. When PS5 shows an advantage, it's more often due to the game simply being more suitable to aspects that PS5 excells at. Most games aren't being designed around PS5 specifically. They're designed with a wide hardware range (including nVidia PC GPU's) in mind.

PS5's popularity advantage helps, but not every case where it beats Xbox Series X is just because it's the lead platform (what even is a lead platform anymore?) It's more accurate to say that "PS5 was designed around what developers wanted" than to say "Developers design around what the PS5 is".

Regardless, my main point was that optimization isn't going to put PS6 ahead of the next Xbox if the latter beats it at every metric. PS6 will need to be similar to PS5 and answer with a number of hardware advantages of its own, preferably stuff that developers are asking for. After all, Cerny didn't panic at Series X and "boostclocked" the PS5 at the last second out of desperation lol.