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Breaking Down the Dropping Parts Cost for Sony's PS3
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."
The game console business models are very well understood. How is this news?
It still precludes them from selling at $299, which is where marketing data is suggesting they need to go to compete against Xbox.
PS3 is being outsold by a good margin month to month, which means market share is dwindling (although objectively there are more PS3s in the world, which makes the equation for game developers shift) - and they seem to be losing developer mind share, as evidenced by the fact that there are few games that are PS3 exclusive. Most importantly and shockingly, Microsoft is getting Japanese game developers to come over to Xbox, where that model simply didn't exist in the PS2 days.
Sony needs about 4-5 more Metal Gear Solid like titles, and they really need to work out the bugs with online play. I don't use my PS3 online, but from what I am to understand, it's not even close to Xbox live.
cutting the cost of the CPU ($46.46 vs. $64.40), and cutting the cost of the graphic processor to $46.46 from $64.40.
Whoa, so the Cell processor IS the graphics processor? Yo dawg, I heard you like to compute so I put a processor in your processor!
Because the summary probably won't be fixed.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
A new version of Nvidia Corp.'s Reality Synthesizer serves as the graphic processing unit for the game console. The revised version of the part is priced at $58.01, down 30.3 percent from $83.17 previously.
The summary has used the CPU prices as both. Seriously, even if you the submitter made an honest mistake writing it down, surely the editor should've noticed that both figures being the same was suspicious and double-checked? Is it really too much to ask for the slightest bit of editing?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
The article does not mention anything about exchange rates - since the PlayStation is not manufactured in the US and the article mention all amounts in dollars [the Yen strengthened considerably against the Dollar the last year or so] - I would take the amounts with a pinch of salt.
The other possibility of course is that they converted everything from Yen into Dollars - but did not mentioned it.
They wouldn't have had to spend over $1B on repairs and extend the warranty an extra 3 years for the XBox 360. Chances are, the 360 would be cutting a small profit by now. The moral of the story if the successor to the XBox 360 is to trounce Sony, is that they need to not cut corners if they want to exploit Sony's weakness. They'd better learn that because the PS3 is a very, very powerful system and when it hits $300 will be in the range that a lot of gamers will be willing to pay.
Keep all the price comparisons either from-to or all to-from. Don't mix the two because you'll confuse people (eg me). When I saw "...the hardware has gone from costing $690.23 to the current price of $448.73." it triggered me to read the last sentence as "cutting the cost of the graphic processor from $46.46 to $64.40.". I thought I was seeing some sort of Orwellian finances in effect.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
While the part about needing to be $299 to compete was interesting (but it was in a comment), is this really newsworthy? Now, if the price of the parts went down and the price of the system DIDN'T go down, that might be more worth it. But how interesting is a news flash telling us that the price of electronic components has reduced in price over the last few years? Hmmm.
On the other hand, I did find the pricing interesting, as those prices are a lot cheaper than I get for my computer. I wonder if that's because computer parts are marked up more, or because the PS3 components aren't t as powerful (what a very relative, subjective, and non-descript word... sorry) as my computer components.
in Europe. If a PS3 costs them $448.73 (317,48â) to make, that means they make almost 80,00â for every console sold in the EU (they sell for 399,00â). A price drop *could* be possible here in the old continent.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
No matter how you look at the numbers, PS3 lost, even before it came out. I know people who gotten the PS3 just as a Blu-Ray player, simply because they were cheaper than stand-alone Blu-Ray players at the time, and they have not gotten any games for it. Of course now that stand-alone Blu-Ray players are actually cheaper than PS3s, that market share is no longer there either.
They need to drop the price point to be just slightly above the average Blu-Ray player to be competitive, I think. Which will never happen, seeing as how Sony has been taking the financial blow from the PS3 since well before it was released. To have a $200 loss on each PS3 sold would be just far too much.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
The cell can be used for a variety of graphics purposes.
One common use is transforming a skeleton and associated vertex attributes.
It's good at doing anything where there's a streaming data, i.e. like the aforementioned vertex attributes as skeleton influences weights.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
If Sony can't make it go as a game machine, it turns out it works good as a cluster computer, esp. wrt to cracking keys and finding MD5 collisions:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/berlin.html
"With iSuppli's estimated PS3 cost at $448.73, the product retailing in the United States at around $399 and taking into account other expenses, the PS3 may be able to break even in 2009 with further hardware revisions."
I don't know what this statement means. Are they saying that total cost (direct and indirect cost) per unit in 2009 will fall below $399 retail price ? If yes, then that is not breakeven. Also, it seems to me that they have very little idea of other expenses (both direct and indirect)to be able to even make that statement.
It drives me nuts ....
Excellent post -- I wonder how many potential PS3 customers are sitting on the sidelines angered by the continued inferior-ization of the device? I wanted to get a 60 GB but just missed the window before they introduced the software-based PS2 emulation models, at which point 60 GB models went *UP* in price on ebay. I delayed purchasing one, thinking subsequent revisions would have *increased* PS2 compatibility, but they have just gotten cheaper and cheaper (in quality), removing support for things like SACD, continued erosion of PS2 compatibility, and kept the price the same. For a while, a new 60 GB model would sell for near $1000 on eBay!
Ugh, come on Sony. Way to alienate your fanbase, especially the tech nerds who know and care about such details.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
im no genius - but when newer better parts are implemented, doesnt that increase performance, is this ps3.5?
I have the original 60GB, and I wish I had the new 65nm cell chip - the fan in my PS3 is louder than anything else in the house, we have to crank up the volume to hear movie dialogue over it.
Now, assuming that I did plump out another $400 just to get a quieter box, how much of a pain in the a$$ would it be to transfer all of my downloaded games onto the new unit?
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.
*woooosh*
"...parts (currently 2,820 vs. the original 4,048..."
Sheesh. Sony does make some intricate stuff, but even a Walkman had fewer parts, the cassette models even.
Maybe they need to re-think the parts count? 1,000 would seem a target for me.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Kotaku.com is some good stuff.
Sony angered me with their whole DRM-trojan-on-music-cd's fiasco. I have not forgotten. If I am ever going to buy a sony product again, there must be a seriously compelling reason.
The PS3 includes an expensive blue-ray player. It is worthless to me. I expect it is equally worthless to most people who are considering buying a PS3. If they want to lower their hardware costs, they should just get rid of that.
Instead, they lowered hardware costs by removing the hardware emulation for the ps2. As I understand, that means that the latest ps3's won't play the old games. That is no good, as I like some of the old games and want to play them.
The xbox 360, aside from being cheaper, and from supporting all the games I want to play (especially including the big releases), is fully backwards compatible. It provides better value all around.
If Sony wants to compete against that, they need to do it by getting rid of the stuff people don't care about and keeping the stuff people do care about. And they also need to get that chip off their shoulder....the antics they pulled (limiting supply so they could say "we sold out already!" to try and make people think it was more popular than it was....public statements like "if you can find a ps3 that has been on a store shelf for more than five minutes, I will pay over a thousand dollars for it!" which were obviously bogus to everyone who wandered into a best buy) reflect a marketing strategy built entirely on arrogance and utterly doomed to failure.
Sup dawg, I heard you like not laughing, so I put a stupid meme in your stupid meme so you could not laugh while you don't laugh.
I just got an 80GB PS3 for Xmas. It's a bit shocking to compare this version to previous ones and notice what's been cut. To be honest, however, this is the version Sony should have released from the start because what was cut I consider largely superfluous for the PS3's primary purpose which is playing games.
I can only imagine that some higher ups at Sony had this unrealistic vision that both the PSP and PS3 were going to be complete entertainment and information centers to replace everything else. Things didn't work out with the PSP, so even though Sony executives might have been aware of those issues before the release of the PS3 it was too late to address them. And some probably continued to insist it would be a success.
But ultimately, the real problem with the PS3, I don't think, is the price of the system. Well, it may be now with the economy, but I think the real problem still is the lack of good games. There seems to be a never-ending stream of games promised to be great and which turn out to be mediocre. There's an overall lack of variety, and in some genres there aren't more than an handful of games available.
I encountered this upon trying to decide what I wanted to get for my PS3. There's not a huge selection outside of shooters, sports and a number of racing games. And an even bigger problem is the fact that most games are cross-platform which largely renders the PS3 irrelevant given the Xbox360s install base. I bought four games and that's pretty much all I'm interested in getting at this point.
Sony needs to get more exclusives, which is going to be difficult, but there already exist a number of exclusives in Japan that are unavailable in the US. I'm not sure who are the decision makers that don't bring to the US potentially interesting games. If nothing else it would create more options for players here. And perhaps it might help move the market away from the more adult crowd the PS3 currently seems to attract.
On a side note, my PS3 is quite quiet. I hear the harddrive going more than I hear the fan itself. And the system seems to run cool. Of course we're entering winter, so it may be a different story in the summer.
Well I don't know about PhDs but the game developers that try a bit (like naughty dog, insomniac or guerilla games) have no problem using all of the available SPUs.
Mada mada dane.
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.
I hear everyone argue and debate that although Sony sells the console at a loss, they make up this loss by selling games.
WRONG
They make it up by packaging the system with one controller and then getting you to buy 3 more $10 controllers at $50 a piece, and other accessories that will no doubt be purchased such as "hi-def" cables.
Further revenue can be gained by charging an optional monthly fee, ala xbox-live, or a content delivery platform like Sony and Microsoft are trying to do.
It is easy to cut the parts count when you ditch USB ports and card readers.
The trick isn't to use each SPU. The trick is to fully use the SPU and not have it waiting for memory look-ups or core-to-core communication.
Which is definitely not a "no problem" kind of situation. Look at the list of canceled PS3 games, heck, even EA had issues getting red alert 3 onto it! It is not a simple nor easy setup. Anyone that has any experience threading systems could tell you that, especially across asymmetric cores!
the part that gets me though is why they have made it cheaper. they have made it CHEAPER. WTF?
No more ps2/1 games. I have the original 60GB and love it. And if it brakes I'm stuck with an 80GB that can only play ps3 games.
Must be in fear of taking the same path of the NeoGeo.
Yes, programming without depending on cache is, IMHO, the key to fully utilizing multi-core and, later, many-core (+50) architectures. Alternative is a major break-through in cache-technology/research.
I.e. do block processing on, reasonably sized, chunks of data. This perhaps sounds more complicated to achieve in practise than it can be/is.
Key is to do thorough analysis and divide your system/program architecture (e.g. by OOA) with respect to not only objects et c. but also data streams.
"Ah, objects of these types are usually accessed and used together, in a sequential or parallel manner! Let's create a compact (memory wise) container to enable efficient use of our cells...", compare with e.g. patterns for distributed server communications, DAOs et al.
Actually, forget that.
The Gamecube WAS THE bleeding edge in its day. And it still managed to turn a profit. But I think it was 300$ at launch; I can't remember what the PS2 and Xbox were like.
Rather, what I meant, is that you can't go out and nab something crazy like bluray and put it in your designs. You have to put careful consideration and make sure everything works perfectly and won't cost too much, that way you can keep profits up.
BluRay will almost certainly replace DVD. But it probably won't happen until BluRay disks and players are price-competitive with standard DVD players. Most consumers are not willing to pay a premium for BluRay. It's better, but on the modest screen size TVs that are owned by most people, the difference is fairly subtle--perhaps worth an extra dollar on the disk and an extra $10 on the player, at most. Netflix has it about right by charging an extra dollar for BluRay subscriptions.
Yes, I've bought more download titles than disks
All those fours and sixes were confusing Will_die, but he's feeling much better now that the medication has kicked in.
"In some cases, a redesign might lose some functionality that was previously available, but never used" Like backwards compatiblity. Gone from hardware which a good working ratio. To none existant. To software with a poor working ratio.
Gamers may have trouble justifying the price of a play station but bot net mafias [a] can probably afford a few hundred of them and [b]now have a proven crack for the MD5 hash that underpins SSL certs employing the cell processors in PS3...the cost/reward analysis for hackers just got interesting.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
No offense, but your teacher probably isn't an expert at SPU utilization yet since very few people are, and most of them are busy at IBM or game development.
Call in some of the programmers from Insomniac or something if you want insights.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Wow. You have an insight into why those games were cancelled that nobody else does? You know for a fact that they weren't over budget or memory limited?
If the PS3 has a fault, its that Sony should've designed it with 1GB or more of RAM instead of 256MB.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
1. By using a Silicon Motion instead of Nvidia (Software rendering) 2. By upgrading memory to 1GB in order to help developers write software renderers and H264/MPEG4 decoders 3. Drop BluRay
Theres a bunch of different streams it switches between dynamically. Which one you get can be limited by:
Available bandwidth (we'll send as many bits as won't cause buffering)
Available CPU speed (we don't want you to drop a bunch of frames)
Resolution of the media player (no need to send 1280x720 when the video window is scaled down to 320x240)
All of the above can be switched every couple of seconds, so if you have a heavy CPU process in the background, the data rate will drop during it, and then go back up again after.
To make sure you're not blocked by frame size, you can alt-Enter in IE to take the browser full screen.
Also, to see your current stream, mouse over on the little horizontal bars in the lower right corner.
Lastly, bear in mind this is a pre-beta here. We'll have big improvements by the time it goes 1.0 next year.
My video compression blog
That verdict is flawed from the very beginning, since the SPUs don't have any cache.
They have a Local Store memory, which is conceptually very different from cache memory. This results in a completely different programming model.
I find yours a very strange case, because I'd expect fancy architecture and complicated programming models to be discussed to death in a super computing class.
By the way, you can only use 6 SPUs in the PS3. The 7th one is locked, completely isolated and holds a hypervisor program in its Local Store.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!