bigtroyjon
Member
The 360's current average selling price is over $300. There is no possible way a successor needs to be $350 in order to sell.
Rumor: Xbox 3 = 6-core CPU, 2GB of DDR3 Main RAM, 2 AMD GPUs w/ Unknown VRAM, At CES
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The 360's current average selling price is over $300. There is no possible way a successor needs to be $350 in order to sell.
100-120 Watts for the GPU alone is doable in a console?
More than twice, plus a six-core GPU with SMT? We'd be looking at a 250W console here. That's not easy to cool, and it would make the power brick huge and expensive.
Proelite
Member
Pretty much. The 360 (in NA) is going to dominate the sales charts this holiday season. And like previously mentioned the average selling price is over $300. A $400 next gen console will do A-OK at launch.
Proelite
Member
50W cpu maybe? I don't see why the CPU has to be a power hog like Xenon was (90 W).
PowerPC A2 derivative perhaps?
Instead of last time where it's 90W (CPU) and 60W (GPU), they could do 100W (GPU) and 50W (CPU).
Top selling console doesn't mean that thing has cost Sony billions and they themselves have created such a sinkhole. At what gain? A PR statement that they are they sold more while their competitors are more profitable? You should always look at these things from two perspectives.
THE:MILKMAN
Member
Another big difference between this gen and last. Die shrinks have slowed (it seems) a lot.
The PS2 chips came in at a combined 519mm2 at launch and ended at a single chip at 86mm2 in 5 years.
The PS3 chips after 5 years went from a combined ~475mm2 to ~235mm2.
It's because we are nearing the maximum efficiency for silicon, which is why intel went with their 3d gate tech
Industry is working hard to find a suitable replacement to silicon for future processors right now
THE:MILKMAN
Member
Any chance of Sony or MS going Intel? (lol)
Graphene transistors...
So you expect a 50W hex-core CPU with SMT and a high clock speed.
Proelite
Member
"The PowerPC A2 is a massively multicore capable and multithreaded 64-bit Power Architecture processor core designed by IBM using the Power ISA v.2.06 specification. Versions of processors based on the A2 core range from a 2.3 GHz version with 16 cores consuming 65 W to a less powerful, four core version, consuming 20 W at 1.4 GHz. Each A2 core is capable of four-way multithreading and have 16+16 instruction and data cache per core."
Maybe they can do a 6 core version running at 3.0 Ghz?
I was going to mention that but it's not a sure thing yet afaik
Unlikely- Microsoft went with intel for Xbox but Sony likes designing their own chips and Microsoft really wants a custom solution and needs access to intel patents to do what they want as they'd go to the fabs themselves but intel being one of the rare companies with its own fabs, it makes things kinda sticky
Intel doesn't like Working with others usually and they do their own designs at their own pace (and are scary good when they are on their game)
Oh man I love these pre-announcement times and the faulty reasoning it brings...
There a couple of things at play here... for arguments sake let's say MS will do this the conventional route, the smart route...
They contract AMD to design a chip for them. This is most likely what is now a higher mid range next gen chip (not for sale at the moment) with elements of the chip after that.
AMD pockets money for that, straight up in the pocket. I believe I read somewhere sometime it was 100 million for designing Xenos (could be significantly less, the other figure in my head was only 20 million) and MS got the IP of the chip for that price. They do have to pay some royalties though. Basically what happens then is that AMD/ATI have done their job (although they might give support for die shrinks). It's up to Microsoft to produce the chip. So the 'only' costs for MS are the wavers of silicon and royalties.
What happened with Xenos, the chip in the 360, was that they designed a chip in R500 range (X1800/X1900) with elements that were only introduced in the chip after that. MS got a say in what they wanted so for instance the chip was tailored to suit eDram MB and in comparison a lot of shader units. (But moderately clocked to keep power consumption reasonable).
Comparative cards like the X1800XT and X1950GT would run you between somewhere in the ballpark of 400$ when the 360 launched.
The same goes for the main CPU. Xenon in the case of 360 was contracted by MS at IBM. IBM designed the chip for a certain amount of money and gave MS the IP so MS could do with it what it wanted.
Those one time fees not withstanding, the main thing that determines the price of those chips are the yields (and some royalties to be paid). In the beginning it won't be cheap (lots of broken processing units) but as the process matures yields will get better. That $400 graphics card cost MS $140 when it launched, and it dropped 40% in the first year according to estimates.
In 2005 there was similar talk about how the box would be a million bucks because of the parts. But it won't be... The costs for MS aren't anywhere near the price you as a consumer would pay for similar PC parts.
Proelite
Member
I thought it was 500 million? 100 million seems like a steal for how good Xenos became.
charlequin
Banned
That's a result of bundles that include Kinect and a game. The 360's successor is not going to include a Kinect sensor for free with its launch bundle and won't have anything else bundled that improves the value proposition the way these bundles do.
I mean, I disagree with the $350 number (nobody even cares about $50 points at that level; once you're over $299 there's no real difference between $350 and $399, so you might as well launch at $399 and cut later) but I think it's a big mistake to look at Microsoft's current success (which is spread across a $200 range of pricepoints and buoyed by a long process of value-adding) and read from it that premium pricing is a good strategy for a new system that can't match the same value proposition.
Maybe, but without knowing anything about price, how BC would come in, what size that would be, the clock ranges, or even if the chip itself is practical for consoles, it's tough to say.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
4Gb would just cost a LOT.
Hiro_Kunimi_80
Member
less than an insane amount of Edram
elrechazado
Banned
What do you mean "for free"? I thought we all thought MS would include kinect in the box in some form or another in the next xbox.
Proelite
Member
Extremely doable.
We know nothing about the Hex-core CPU. It can be a 10W hexacore ARM CPU. The other parts you can do for 20-30 W.
AMD was/still is in their own little financial crisis so they will do anything to get money rolling -also afaik MS pays royalty to AMD/IBM for every console produced- the lump sum was just for R&D costs (the royalty scales so over time the fee is reduced to be in line with the rest of the lowering costs, effectively giving Microsoft a potentially hugely profitable machine as the generation wears on)
Z
ZombieFred
Unconfirmed Member
I hope that Microsoft would go the leap on making sure that it's a technical beast (within reason) that would be doable for another generation. I think Microsoft can afford that, if they wish to take advantage of their cloud and Windows 8 services to be integrated into the system. They've won on the on-line console service in the living room so what's stopping them from going the extra mile? The 360 will keep on selling as this new console is out so it shouldn't be much of a burden this time around.
bigtroyjon
Member
The value of a new console will be greater than the value of a 360+Kinect and if it's not then there is no reason for them to release a new console.
Graphics Horse
Member
It probably won't have a Kinect bundled, but it may have Hexic 3D! It would, at a guess, support all your existing 360 games too. The value would be that it plays a bunch of new games and stuff, rather than being targeted at people who don't already own a console.
In the long view, I think this will be seen as a blip on the radar.
However, consoles generations have a relatively short timeline - and the timing of this is problematic. Given the current situation, can the console manufacturers realistically assume they'll be able to literally die shrink to half the size in 5 years like they did this gen?
I suspect the outlook for that is not particularly promising ... and that sort of planning most certainly impacts the sort of transistor budgets they design for.
First I have heard about royalties. I always thought that was included in the price MS paid. I don't think MS would have allowed that either because it was one of the areas the original Xbox failed: the high base price (in the case of the Xbox the Nvidia and Intel chips at a fixed price and hard drive costs).
100$ mio is quite a lot btw, considering that ATI didn't have to create (reference) cards/chips and sell the product themselves. A design they were working on anyway and it is added revenue they could only get this way. And the profit margin would be much higher also...
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
After all those people just bought a 360? Plus, the current 360 is being shipped with $100 peripheral in Kinect. It appears to be more value.
I know im in the minority, but I don't see a $400 console being successful in this economy.
Shadow of the BEAST
Banned
Great post.
Do we know that for sure? I wouldn't have thought so a generation ago, but now I'm not so sure.
Given the relative popularity of Kinect and its good mindshare combined with their 3 screens and the cloud ... while I wouldn't guarantee Kinect coming with, I would not be surprised either.
They really want to push a set-top box that becomes a centerpiece in your Windows ecosystem ... one that supports services like Bing, etc. Given their strategic direction, I wonder if not including it would actually be the worse way to go? Obviously it will impact other aspects of the system, but they're going to pursue what they think is best for Windows as a whole.
I suppose that's possible, but it's kind of having it both ways given what most are arguing.
We really don't know anything about the system, so we've been speculating based on the leaked specs as they've been reported - which is not ARM.
charlequin
Banned
I mean that if we're talking about a system whose stats justify it being sold at $399, then it's not going to sell as a $399 system with Kinect included. It currently costs you $100 to get a Kinect in a 360 bundle and I'm doubtful it'll cost less than $50 with the 720.
This is the PS3 mistake all over again. No console actually offers a greater value on launch than its predecessor because it has no software and won't start to in any meaningful sense for at least a year.
A typical 2012 holiday shopper who doesn't already own a 360 is going to look at a $399 720 (with no games, not much packed in, and no fringe benefits above the current system) and a $399 360 (that comes with Kinect and a game, can get "amortized" as the singular gift for multiple kids, and has a basically infinite quantity of $20 games to use as extended family gifts, stocking stuffers, or future birthday gifts) and see the latter as an obviously superior deal.
Now, this isn't a problem for a launch-year system because supply is limited and the target market doesn't care about marginal value because they already have the previous system. These people buy the first 6 million or so systems and buy time for the platform-holder to build a software ecosystem and drop the price.
Proelite
Member
I would love to see this kind of budget in the next Xbox.
100 Watt: GPU
50 Watt: CPU
25-50 Watt: Ram, HDD, Bluray, fans, etc.
I suspect that all depends on the outlook for die shrinks, which doesn't appear to be quite what it was last gen.
charlequin
Banned
Let me put it this way: the report a year ago was that a Kinect unit had a $56 BOM (which means it's actually more than that to manufacture and QA.) In 2012 it'll probably be a minimum of $35 to manufacture and include a Kinect sensor in the 720 package. That $35 is either additional loss MS will have to take, or coming directly out of the budget for the system as a whole to keep it below a certain total COM.
So, Kinect might be packed in "for free" in the sense that all units include one and it has no nominal cost to the consumer, but it won't be "for free" in the sense that it has no effect on the cost calculations that go into determining what you get in the box, and including one will one way or another mean a direct tradeoff in terms of the system's other stats.
Graphics Horse
Member
I'd expect them to continue with the dual solid state/hard drive model, say a 32GB unit at $299 and a 500GB at $399. That's assuming the standard 360 has dropped in price by then.
Proelite
Member
I see 200W as the maximum TDP regardless of fab size. Is it possible to go higher next generation? Maybe with advances in cooling tech and a better designed ASIC they can push that to 250W.
If they launch at 28nm, odds are they'll be able to get down to 11 nm by the end of the cycle
The generation after next is going to be the tough one
It's nice to believe things but AMD is actually receiving per-chip royalty payments.
bigtroyjon
Member
$35 is an almost meaningless addition to the total costs of the system. If it's really the difference between selling or not selling they will just add it on to whatever the current stats are.
No, no it's not.
clutch.as.it.gets.
Member
4 GB wouldn`t cost a LOT. Would it cost more? Of cause. But not THAT much.
If they targed 1080p resolution the "next gen" games will have the same annoying issues like the current gen games. Open world games wouldn`t look good and still had lots of lod problems, framerate would suffer with lots of screen tearing and textures wouldn`t improve much generally - if at all. I wouldn`t be interested in a short sided 2GB console.
Proelite
Member
4GB of GDDR5 would cost more than just the additional 2GB of GDDR5 ram itself. They'll have to make a motherboard that supports twice as many ram modules.
What in the hell are you talking about?
How would 2 GB of ram have anything to do with the operating performance of the software? LOD is indicative of the power, usually, as opposed to memory constraints. Tearing is also a result of power(in the sense the developer couldn't get the game code running well enough to activate Vsync) - same with framerate...
2 GB is an over 4x improvement for textures (as I have explained before) which would basically be basically as good as it really needs to get for the next generation
It would cost more than double to go to 4 GB- and considering the very minute improvement you'd get from 4 GB over 2, it's simply not worth the price
So I ask again- what the hell are you talking about lol
charlequin
Banned
ahahahahahahaha no.
$35 on 6 million sales during the launch window is $210,000,000. $35 over 50m lifetime sales is nearly $2 billion.
As a comparison, this generation we've regularly seen companies shave off components that cost less than $5 in order to eke out extra margin on their consoles, because the economics on these systems are just that tight.
Now, again, that doesn't mean that we won't see the 720 be packed with Kinect -- but if we do, it's a direct tradeoff against either the system's stats or the MSRP.
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