Falcon is the CPU and it is reduced to 65nm, but the GPU is the graphics unit and hasn't undergone a change yet.

@ Nickel

Ahhh... Okies.

So the CELL is the PS3s GPU?

It's not really comparable in all aspects


1) The 360 MOBO is cheaper to make than the PS3 MOBO at identicle NM

2) MS is going for GPU/CPU on a single chip at 65NM before any 45NM work

No, the RSX is the PS3's GPU.

Which should be at least be comparable in cost savings to the 45nm Cell... I only used "45nm" in the header as to not confuse those who aren't familiar with die shrinks.

nice read, i got through most of it.

I think M$ will come up with one first (because they aren't losing money currently), and sony won't be far behind. They can't be too far off of profitability in their gaming division.

They've made $621 million in the last 9 months

They've sold about 6 million 360s in the last 9 months

They could have knocked another $50 off the RRP on those 6 million and still came it at $300 million profit, 8 million to $200 million (though since those extra 2 million would have bought games and Live, profits would be a bit higher)

It should be obvious at this point MS is making obscene cash on 360

Here's PS2's profits for each fiscal year since it launched up to PS3's launch

2000    730,000,000   
2001    -409,000,000 
2002    623,000,000   
2003    939,000,000   
2004    650,000,000  
2005    404,000,000   
2006    75,000,00    

If MS makes $30 million in profit next quarter it will beat the underlined year, which means MS's Entertainment division would have bested 5 of 7 the PS2's profitable years.

I really thing people underestimate how much the 360 has made since September

"MS is aggressively attacking Europe with mixed results. Price drops helped a bit and it will be interesting to see how the 199 Arcade Halo/PGR bundle will affect Euro sales."

I doubt the new bundle will bring about any significant change. The 360 is currently under half the price of a 40GB PS3 in Europe and is still being comfortably outsold.

There are also non-official bundles very similar to the Halo/PGR one at the moment available in most game shops.

At €199 the 360 has effectively reached a mass market price point in the EU (It's even cheaper than the Wii). So I think demand for the console is not going to change much until later this year when MS release some of their big titles, undoubtedly giving the console a noteworthy boost.

This is probably WAY off base, but could Microsoft's profit and Sony's loss be tempered by the home country of each company? If you take exchange rates into consideration, every console MS sells outside the US(especially in the UK where the rate is 2:1) will return to MS corporate far more profit than one sold in the states. The yen, while also down, doesn't seem as hobbled currently as the dollar, so Sony might see less realized profits coming out of Europe despite it's current situation there(exasperated a bit by the hardware costs.) That's one of the advantages to US companies with a weak dollar. Concievably, MS could cut costs in Others(mainly Europe) and still maintain a realized profits advantage over Sony while making a concerted play at undercutting the PS3's momentum in the region. I'm probably wrong, though...dumb thoughts usually form in my mellon whilst bored.

The Arcade pack isn't the grand foundations of the bulk of its sales, people shouldn't compare a SKU the public doesn't like to the Wii.