Breaking Down the Dropping Parts Cost for Sony's PS3 302
will_die writes "The people at iSuppli have taken apart an October 2008 version of the PlayStation 3 to create a bill of materials, along with providing a comparison to original PS3. The article provides information about the changes Sony has made. One of the big ones was that the hardware has gone from costing $690.23 to the current price of $448.73. This was done using a combination of removing parts (currently 2,820 vs. the original 4,048), cutting the cost of the CPU ($46.46 vs. $64.40), and cutting the cost of the graphics processor to $58.01 from $83.17."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, not all these changes are good! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm all for a cheaper PS3, which apparently can only happen with a bit of "wow" taken out of the box, but for a bit of history:
*The original 20 and 60 GB models of the PS3 supported full hardware backwards compatibility for the PS2 (with the notable exception of the Guitar Hero controllers). The 60GB had a lot of extras, like card slots.
*The 80GB unit without FULL backward compatibility still supports 80% of PS2 titles, and retains the memory card slots.
The way I see it, you shouldn't degrade a tech product over its life cycle, you should add features to it. Or failing that, it should get VERY cheap, and super small.
PS3 isn't doing either. I'm glad I own the 80GB model.
Re:Sony needs to... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the online part is more doable and more important for PS3 to compete. The 360 was better online to begin with, but since the update the PS3 is even further behind now.
It will be interesting to see if the games for PS3 start to really use that extra processing power. I feel that back in the sega nintendo days the first game was usually horrible compared to what developers were able to do after the system had been around a while. Do the new console wars prevent games from getting even close to that peak anymore? and will the PS3 be that next step? or will that take too long and the new Xbox III have better timing?
Re:Sony needs to... (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'd like to know is the real install base of the three consoles. You know, not every Xbox360 sold is actually going to a new customer due to a so-called RROD phenomenon. Is there any good data to clear that up?
Re:Exchange Rates? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sony needs to... (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually I just bought a brand new PS3 from Sony for $250. Sign up for a Sony Rewards card, and you get a new 80 gig PS3 for $250.
Mind you, Microsoft is losing tons of money with RRODs, and I'm not sure they can really afford to sell a 360 for $200, but they're doing it for market share.
My Wii is gathering dust, but Nintendo sells cheap hardware for a profit, and people can't get enough. Maybe they're the ones doing it right.
Re:If only Microsoft hadn't cut corners (Score:2, Interesting)
i have seen several 360's die each had the same issue which with hunting turned out to be a failure in the soder joints on the GPU due to excessive heat or some failure at that manufacturing point or maybe nV's fault (didn't they have a big back lash about GPU failures in laptops?) or it could have been alittle of all of the above.
over all the 360 is a great consol.. but also the only consumer electronic device that i would recomend buying and extended warrenty for (well recommend before MS extended the warrenty)
who knows.. i still refuse to pay that much for a consol.. the 360 or ps3.. the wii is nice.. but until the US version will let me play DVD movies like they said they where going to do (the Jap version does) then i can justify it.
Re:Sony needs to... (Score:4, Interesting)
The WSJ has the same take on the PS3. It is doomed. I am not so sure. Sony always plays to the big picture, is always, as the say in politics, on script. Sony has a lot of different interest, but what is interesting is that all these interests seem to play together, none of them go off script just because it might mean more profit in the unit. For instance, the MP3 players did not sweep the market due to the fact that Sony wanted to protect it's content interests and push the memory card standard. Some might call that a mistake, others might have said it would have been a mistake to stab other divisions in the back by doing otherwise.
So what has happened here. MS built a game console with very good games that they could sell relatively cheaply. Now, dollar for dollar it does not do so well as the WII, which it competes at the entry price level, is still selling more that the XBox. Wii sales doubled, Xbox relatively flat. To be clear, Wii sold twice as many units as XBox, and given street prices, many paid more for the Wii. OTOH, XBox games seems to be selling more. To make it cheap it did not include a big HD or a dvd drive. In effect, MS gave up the living room to save game console. But is likely not to even have the lions share of the game console market.
Sony used an integrated strategy. The built a more expensive console, but made it a complete unit, with blu ray. I think that many would agree that the blu ray decision was a factor in blu ray winning the format wars, and that this has long term strategic significance to Sony, most specifically in keeping the living room away from MS, who bet on HD DVD.
So Xbox likely has fewer consoles out there than Wii. Both are primed for streaming media, and not all XBox 360 are capable of playing stored movies, or at least not a lot of them. The PS3 is half in number, but each one is ready to play a new, expensive, and sometimes Sony generated blu ray disc. I think MS continues on it's way to win the battle but lose the war.
Re:If only Microsoft hadn't cut corners (Score:3, Interesting)
After looking into this a bit, it seems MS was in a rush to get the console out a year before the PS3, they also made several last-minute decisions (mainly the HD) that got in the way of the cooling (which is what is causing the RROD), also when an engineer found the DVD Scratching issue they decided not to do anything (vs two fixes that would cost them $$)
Both issues have come back to haunt them, the cooling issue still causes RROD on even newer models, and the DVD Scratching issue as well is still around on the newer models.
In short, MS was in to big of a rush to fix the problems so they passed them onto the consumer (why is anyone surprised?).
I for one like my PS3 and have no intention of getting a 360, there may be more games for it and more people playing but with such attitudes from the company I just don't want any part of it, I want to play games, not be waiting for it to come back from repair again.
Re:asdf (Score:5, Interesting)
It's good at doing anything where there's a streaming data
When we discussed the Cell processor in my super computing class, the verdict was it required streaming data to be fully utilized since each of the SPUs each had too little cache.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to instead only have 3 SPUs (+1 PPU) with a little more power and caching each instead of the 7 SPUs. As it stands, it is a problem that is stumping many PhDs.
Re:Sony needs to... (Score:5, Interesting)
>I think that many would agree that the blu ray decision was a factor in blu ray winning the format wars, and that this has long term strategic significance to Sony, most specifically in keeping the living room away from MS, who bet on HD DVD.
As far as Microsoft's bet... Microsoft didn't bet anything_ on HD-DVD:
1) They just offered an add-on player and let their fanboys bet THEIR money on HD-DVD.
2) They threw a hundred mil or so at Toshiba. Toshiba lost a LOT of standing with consumers.
Toshiba's reputation sucks now... ask folks who bought last year's Walmart Toshiba HD-DVD players and all the movies they could. Funny how this debacle does not touch Microsoft any.
I don't think Microsoft wanted either format to gain critical mass - wide and early adoption is a threat to Microsoft's goal of 'services', including pay per view and digital downloads. Microsoft set HD video back by a year, that's all they got and that's all they wanted.
Re:Sony needs to... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony has virtually ALWAYS sold their consoles at a loss though. They're selling PS3 at a loss now, and they sold PS2 at a loss for most of the first part of it's lifespan. Selling the system at a loss and making that back up through game sales is nothing new, and has been pretty standard fare for Sony and MS for a while now.
Re:asdf (Score:5, Interesting)
The trick isn't to use each SPU. The trick is to fully use the SPU and not have it waiting for memory look-ups or core-to-core communication.