SIGH...alas Graphene does not have a natural band-gap and the type of transistors used in traditional computing chips are not possible to be made with the material. *prays for silicine*
Rumor: Xbox 3 = 6-core CPU, 2GB of DDR3 Main RAM, 2 AMD GPUs w/ Unknown VRAM, At CES
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SIGH...alas Graphene does not have a natural band-gap and the type of transistors used in traditional computing chips are not possible to be made with the material. *prays for silicine*
bigtroyjon
Member
Yes it is, it will likely cost them over $10 billion dollars to ship out the first 10 million consoles between the per unit manufacturing costs, marketing and R&D. Adding 35 per unit is $350 million which is almost meaningless, especially if it's the difference between selling or not.
You can bet your ass that Nintendo would have loved to have been able to add $35 per unit in costs in order to sell all the 3DS at $250. When you throw in the fact that the next 360 will retail for probably $400 it's not close.
I personally don't think launch customers will see added value in Kinect(they likely already own one if they have any interest.) so I don't think they add it initially but if there is value in it $35 wouldn't stand in the way.
Let them bleed more money! More is meaningless!
clutch.as.it.gets.
Member
Then talk to Yerli from crytek and ask him why Crysis 2 on ps3 and xbox 360 has that much pop ups and he will explain you that the reason is the small RAM and therefore they had to use slow streaming, while the PC doesn`t have those lod problems because they can preload everything to the RAM.
The question is what the hell you are talking. LOL.
MS bleeding money you're joking right? Even if they lose in a big way they still win, they're making money of Android of all things.
bigtroyjon
Member
It's not bleeding money if it results in them selling consoles. Bleeding money is adding in a bunch of costs without selling consoles(PS3, OGXbox) because you aren't working off the R&D expenses.
You're right! My bad. How stupid of me to think that nearly 10% of the retail price is significant!
Well to be fair...
1) those $35 bucks are likely to drop even further over time, especially when you can order parts in extremely large quantities....
2) It gives you common factor across all SKU's. Something you can build on, a simple to use 'touch' interface on every tv. (Great for Metro apps for Win 8 and 720)...
3) gives you a competitive edge, which results in more sales...
4) could, but to a much lower effect, allow for longer sales...
But you are completely right. There is no such thing as free. You are paying for it somehow. I personally think though that MS is willing to take an extra hit for it because it will enable a common gesture based interface. An interface that's easy to use for everyone. Controllers scare people who don't normally use them. It will be much easier to navigate the console and Win 8-style apps through Kinect.
bigtroyjon
Member
Not sure why the retail price matters since we are talking about the costs and $35 is going to be less than 5% that. The discussion was based around the idea that Kinect ads enough value to selling consoles at higher prices. If they can sell more at a higher price, then yep, it's meaningless.
charlequin
Banned
Right, that's my entire point. If people are trying to work out the maximum power you could squeeze out of a $399 box in 2012, they're shooting too high if they think Kinect will also be included.
I actually don't have a position about what the better choice for MS would be. It might honestly be more profitable for them to sell a model without Kinect and let people use the one from their 360 or buy it separately when they want it -- or it might be better in the long run to force it into place on all units so it can see broader use by software. Not sure which is the better call.
There have probably been dozens of meetings trying to determine the exact same thing.
maybe they're just PCs trying to provide an idea of the power of the next xbox. A 6990 might be required to simulate that performance under a PC/directX environment. You'd be able to get the same final performance under a console architecture with a lower powered card.
So, you think the next XBox will cost more than $700 to make, but will be sold for $400?
clutch.as.it.gets.
Member
Of cause. If you buy a new car and they "donate" to you some "gifts" like keyfobs, mats... , thats all factored in and you paid already for that.
charlequin
Banned
What? The 720 is not going to cost $700 to manufacture.
There's no such thing as selling more consoles in the launch window; you're supply constrained and every extra dollar you spend on manufacturing is a dollar lost. Once you get out of launch window, it might have an effect, but you still have to balance it against other costs: Kinect might add sales, but in that case why not cut $35 from the silicon budget to offset it, thereby earning the extra Kinect sales and still not losing millions of extra dollars?
Like, if your thought process here was even remotely accurate, we'd see companies throwing around $50 price cuts far more than they do.
Except that's not true - and I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before. 1080p60 FP is already supported for single link under the HDMI 1.4 optional formats specification. The 3.4 Gbit/s max bandwidth of HDMI 1.3/1.4 has always been enough to do it.
The current issue is I'm not sure Silicon Image has released Tx/Rx cards clocked high enough to support it as yet. However I would expect them to be available for next gen.
The question then becomes what TV manufacturers will support it? You'll need to be in the market for a new high-endish TV in a year or two to get the initial ones. I'm probably waiting on a new TV for this very reason. Hopefully next or the following year's Sharp Elites support it. Then I'll sell a kidney and get one.
That's just it though ... BD3D is 1080p24 FP. Lot less bandwidth than 1080p60 FP. Current TV's don't support that.
interesting, didn't realise that. However, if its optional, and you're starting from scratch with TVs, I don't think it'd get much traction. And I'd be happy with 3D sticking to 720p at the same equivalent quality as the 2D 1080p version of the game. Stretching to 1080p for 3D might mean sacrificing detail etc.
Probably a little less than 360. And that came in at 525$ on day 1. I'm still thinking a 449$ retail price. And guess that the raw production costs would be the same. So when marketing and shipping and stuff is added they'll make a loss of 50-ish$ in the first year.
I'll bet you 12$ that Kinect will be THE most important part of 720.
They can make a console accessible for the masses. Although we like our buttons for most things I can imagine my parent are scared when the see a controller.
I think a Kinect in every box opens possibilities to a whole new set of people they can sell software to. Not just games but also apps.
That's where an important source of money is. If they can sell 100$ of apps to each console owner in the life span of the console they have their 35$ back.
I am saying it, Microsoft could create 'the iPhone' for the TV with 720 and cater all audiences. They could be the Apple of the living room
Nemesis121
Member
[Nintex];32834225 said:
The entertainment division is in red $6b or $7 billion, and Xbox=$5bil red, they might be in the black every month now but Xbox loss a shit load of money in the past 10 years...
Shin Johnpv
Member
Except that's not entirely true. When 3D is encoded on bluray the two frames are placed on top of each other with 45 black pixels between them. So you're really sending a 1920 x 2205 image at 24fps. Which is less than the 1080p/60 bandwidth, but it's really close. So if you did 3D at 1080p and 30fps you'd be exceeding the 1080p/60 bandwidth limit. Which most cat2 cables should be able to handle, it's the current hdmi transmitters/receivers that probably can't. I'm not sure if when doing a 3D game if they do the frame on top of each other thing, not sure how the PS3/360 push out their 3D to the TV.
Pretty sure E&D division has been profitable for the past few years, or maybe it was just Xbox. Those losses are in the past, sunk costs incurred to get into the business. Nobody is counting that against them any more.
I am not sure your stats are accurate.
And only fanboys/us do the accounting that way. In the real world the losses have been written off and it makes a profit
great post. Hopefully provides a little food-for-thought for those thinking MS are going to newegg.com and buying graphics cards off the shelf. They've already shown they can get tech ahead of time, and customise it significantly for the task they want for it.
Assuming heavy customisation this time around again - what could be done to get a 6970 level performance cost less, be smaller, consume less power? I'm thinking you only need to drive one TV at 1080p, so no need for eyefinity or 2500x1500 monitor resolutions, so filtrate can be cut dramatically and still perform well.
What you will see is that the chip will have a reasonable amount of redundancies. The easiest way is to explain it on the CPU side of things. 6 cores are rumoured. In reality the CPU will probably have 7 cores or might even have 8. There is a reasonable chance that one of the cores isn't manufactured perfect. When you depend on all those 7 cores you can throw you silicon in the trash. When you don't you can disable that broken core (or a not broken core on a perfect unit) and still have a good CPU that's within specs. It dramatically increases yields, but you will use more silicon per chip. So less chips per waver if you have a perfect process, but more chips per waver if it's likely that not every core will make it. Which is way more likely.
You don't want to throw 80% of your chips away, you'd rather get a 60% yield of chips that are 1/7th bigger than they need to be.
It's what AMD has been doing for years with their freaky tri-core chips and even dual core chips. They were just less succesful quadcores.
Same thing goes for the GPU end. So whatever the final specs will be, the true specs are a little higher but you will never ever be able to use it
herzogzwei1989
Banned
Lets hope the Xbox3 GPU has at least 16 ROPs if not 32.
bigtroyjon
Member
You need to factor in R&D. When companies spend billions of dollars developing a product they have a preset amount of units that they will distribute those costs over. Once sales hit past the number costs really shrink and that's when you see them starting to nickle and dime things to reduce manufacturing costs.
Manufacturing costs are only one piece of the puzzle, marketing and R&D end up being huge chunks of the initial costs for consoles. PS3 and 360 are at the current state where manufacturing costs are almost all of the cost of them shipping out units so adding $35 to their manufacturing costs at the moment would be a huge deal but for launch consoles manufacturing is only a piece of the puzzle.
east of eastside
Banned
What exactly is the function of a big, hot, powerful multicore CPU w/ high floating point capability in a next-gen console if AI and physics can be handled by the GPU?
AI and physics can piss off. GPU needs to spend all its days shitting out shiny pixels. CPU can do physics and AI and stuff. Possibly don't need a huge bump compared to what we already have though, unless they're still needed for polygon setup and stuff.
I am no expert on this, but I believe that R&D is an ongoing process. So when 720 eventually launches the bulk of those costs have already been absorbed in previous fiscal statements and offset by the profit of other projects like 360.
Those costs don't have to be made back. They are already been dealt with.
So that entire line of thought concerning R&D's money needs to made back is wrong. I believe it's just us who think that way.
The point I was alluding to is the initial design is always contingent on expectations for future cost reductions (die shrinks). While as DopeyFish pointed out the following generation is at even greater risk, there is concern for this gen in terms of die shrinks. Expectations do not appear to be in line with last gen. That affects the planned transistor budget.
Can you even do 4GB in 8 chips? Before even factoring the actual cost of the extra RAM, the impact on MoBo costs is already pretty significant.
gaming_noob
Member
Go on. Looks like we have someone with lots of knowledge in business.
dude ... that's like $2 billion in costs
No, don't worry. They're spending so much already that spending more is perfectly fine!
THE:MILKMAN
Member
I was just thinking about Microsoft's decision to go for 512MB of DDR3 instead of 256MB.
If they stuck with 256MB would this generation have lasted this long?
If they stuck with 256MB would this generation have lasted this long?
I believe for Microsoft Xbox was like, do we do Xbox or do we pay more income taxes?
They have an annual revenue of $69 billion with a profit close to $28 billion. Just look at the Microsoft research videos of people making things because they want to make things. The Xbox guys got a slap on their wrist for losing a billion... or two, or three... maybe four... five?
They have an annual revenue of $69 billion with a profit close to $28 billion. Just look at the Microsoft research videos of people making things because they want to make things. The Xbox guys got a slap on their wrist for losing a billion... or two, or three... maybe four... five?
Just a random thought here, but if MS are now going to pushing the 720 more as a living room device/entertainment hub, I'd have thought they'd start targetting a lower price. Simply because they will be competing directly with Apple TV's and the like. Sure the ATV doesn't do games, but are families going to pay more just to play games?
I realise they have the gamer market to help push the console via word of mouth but if they are going to market it as some sort of entertainment device, I'd have thought somewhere like US$400 is really, really pushing the limits.
I realise they have the gamer market to help push the console via word of mouth but if they are going to market it as some sort of entertainment device, I'd have thought somewhere like US$400 is really, really pushing the limits.
You make it sounds like AppleTV is going to be cheap.
bgassassin
Member
The cost will be offset by the amount of money saved from buying memory on Newegg.
Barkley's Justice
Member
i doubt that. i bet microsoft went to amd or whoever last year and was like, "ok, what ya got? we wanna buy something."
Free shipping!
Assuming the Tx cards are available at system launch ... it would be nice to offer it as an option with reduced detail.
I really hope games next gen allow resolution, effects selection, VSync, etc. Basically like PC games, but maybe a bit more user friendly (less options?)
They are always doing the ground work for the next thing. Microsoft, or Sony for that matter, needs to know what they want when they want it. They need to figure out what technologies are available when they want to introduce a new console and make choices.
All parts are co-dependent. It doesn't make sense to have a super high end processor with a low end gpu or the opposite. They need a balanced product that will give a bang for the buck and will be viable 5 years in.
But also other things factor in like ease of development, power consumption and others.. I am sure they literally started working on 720 before 360 was pushed out of the factory. That said, the real grunt work starts in the last two years when everything needs to ironed out perfectly.
Risk Breaker
Member
You seem to be missing the 'FP' (frame-packing) in my post. It was listed after the 1080p24 and the 1080p60. 1080p60 3D would be sending 1920x2205 @ 60Hz. Which obviously requires significantly more bandwidth than 24Hz. That's what I was referring to in what you quoted.
There isn't a hard limit like that. They don't cut things that close. I'm pretty sure all HDMI 1.4a Tx/Rx are clocked fast enough that it can handle an extra 45 rows of 0's (which I think is compressed BTW) @ 60Hz. The bigger issue is whether it's designed to sync to it, and whether a TV's processor even knows what to do with it.
PS3 normally uses FP ... though I think there are some games that use alternate methods (particularly on 360).
Risk Breaker
Member
According to some people double the RAM is a "very minute improvement" so yeah, why not? lol
They should go with at least 3 GB. 4GB would be great, and the natural improvement.
specialguy
Banned
Good to see some logic in here...
For me the decision is clear, they need to not pack in Kinect. I'm almost sure they wont, either. Why give up $150 per stand alone Kinect sale? It makes no sense.
For all the criticism I think MS handled Kinect well by seperating it. I'm sure it's resulted in a lot more profit for them as well. It's simple, IF you want Kinect, pay for it.
If anything, get the component costs down and cut Kinect to $99, that will drive adoption while still providing the benefits of being stand alone as detailed above.
Drive performance is the primary limiter in a streaming engine, not memory size.
Moore and Bach already set the target date like right after the 360 shipped and told everyone as early as 2007 they'd be first out of the gate in 2011 or 2012 http://www.destructoid.com/peter-moore-new-xbox-360-in-five-years-30388.phtml.
Some like Kotaku speculated that MS actually delayed and shelved the next Xbox and opted for Kinect because of the economy. There were also rumblings that Intel was trying to get Larrabee in the next Xbox. We've had rumors about Larrabee followed by Bulldozer but my guess is that in the end MS went with the IBM/AMD combo again.
In any case at some point in late 2009/early 2010 Microsoft cancelled the Courier and Allard and Bach both left Microsoft. Allard mostly because of the Courier and failed Zune push, Courier was like his next baby after the Xbox. Bach was mostly held responsible for Microsoft's weak performance in the phone market. The bulk of the Courier team including some of their award winning designers moved on to to help out with the development of the next Xbox.
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