Xbox360 half the price of PS3 at launch

[CptStern]

"Merrill Lynch has released a new breakdown of next generation hardware component costs suggesting that Xbox 360 "could be selling at half the price of PS3 in the latter half of 2006."

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1497&Itemid=2


good news for me as that could be the deciding factor in what console to get ....although I wont discount the revolution just yet

 

[Warbie]

//edit - wrong thread

 

[Icarusintel]

we don't know what the price of the PS3 is gonna be yet, but there was news it was going to be selling for no more than $400 at launch.. and if the Xbox is any indicator the price won;t be going down that fast

 

[CptStern]

we don't know what the price of the PS3 is gonna be yet, but there was news it was going to be selling for no more than $400 at launch.. and if the Xbox is any indicator the price won;t be going down that fast

I think Merril lynch are more than qualified to speculate on prices

they have a breakdown in terms of hardware costs and the price of a ps3 is $495 worth of hardware costs ..but they add this:


"A lot of the predictions made are based upon the assumption that Sony will not take a significant loss on the hardware (which it believes to be the case given Sony's recent financial pressures). If Sony is willing to be aggressive on pricing with PS3, the report conceeds that many of these numbers are likely to change"

 

[Icarusintel]

I think Sony's gonna release the PS3 at about $400, which, while high, is still not astronomical, and they will make up for it on the new BluRay DVDs by selling movies on them

Sony will certainly need to recoup costs, but they'll make more than enough money off of systems and games to make up for selling the system at $400, just look at the profits they made off the PS2

 

[Alan Freeman]

I think Sony's gonna release the PS3 at about $400, which, while high, is still not astronomical, and they will make up for it on the new BluRay DVDs by selling movies on them

Sony will certainly need to recoup costs, but they'll make more than enough money off of systems and games to make up for selling the system at $400, just look at the profits they made off the PS2

Only $400 dollars i'll take TWO!!!

 

[Cole]

I think Sony will sell there console at a competitive price.
Afterall, to make a game you need to invest $17.1million right away.

 

[VirusType2]

Sony created Bu Ray, so they are the only ones that can print the discs. This = expensive they can't get discs from china or something, and they can't get anyone else to print the discs. They are going to use this as an excuse to push blu ray, and to create more blu ray printing plants

The blu ray discs hold much more information, but is it really necessary? any game is only going to use 5% of this disc space

Speculation is that PS3 games may cost 70$ or sony will be selling them for 60$ and making less profit.

Whatever they do, you can bet Sony will work something out.

In japan, HD TV is much more popular. I think the system will sell very well in japan, and pretty decent here, just from the name alone, even if the PS3 isn't worth it or even if it turns out to be less powerful than the 360. I don't know last i heard they haven't even finallized the specs of the PS3

I'm going to get an Xbox 360. It comes out like 1.5 years earlier for 1. the thing looks awesome. the graphics look awesome. I'll take one,.

I wouldn't be surprized if the PS3 comes out at 450$ or 500$ and memory cards like 50$ or something rediculous. NO thanks

Also i hear you can use xbox live "silver" which is free now, Im guessing you get to play online, and download patches and what have you, just wont be able to download as much. Don't know what the premium service will offer over the silver service. My biggest gripe about Xbox live was that i had to pay for the service, so I've very happy to hear about this, although its just what i heard. I don't know any of this to be a fact.

 

[Cole]

Speculation is that PS3 games may cost 70$ or sony will be selling them for 60$ and making less profit.

No Speculation also points that to Xbox360 games. This is because when it costed average $1 million to make a Ps2 game and $2 million average for a Xbox game now there moving into 10 - 60+ million dollor games plus going from about 30 to 100 people.

Developers get about 30 - 45% of the profit. They make about $7.50 off of each game. To pay for all this staff they need more money.

Also i hear you can use xbox live "silver" which is free now, Im guessing you get to play online, and download patches and what have you, just wont be able to download as much.

No Online Play I believed was confirmed. There was speculation about weekends but I think that turned false. Downloading of patches will be there.

The blu ray discs hold much more information, but is it really necessary? any game is only going to use 5% of this disc space

lol 5%??
Lets say the blu ray disc holds about 25gigs.
25 x 0.05(5%) = 1.25gigs.
Ps2 games take up more space than that! Games will need that 25 - 50 gigs it holds.

Here let me point out something Bill Gates, owner of microsoft, said.
"Gates: Well, the key issue here is that the protection scheme under Blu-ray is very anti-consumer and there's not much visibility of that. The inconvenience is that the [movie] studios got too much protection at the expense consumers and it won't work well on PCs. You won't be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way.

It's not the physical format that we have the issue with, it's that the protection scheme on Blu is very anti-consumer. If [the Blu-ray group] would fix that one thing, you know, that'd be fine.

For us it's not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts. "

 

[Icarusintel]

Sony created Bu Ray, so they are the only ones that can print the discs. This = expensive they can't get discs from china or something, and they can't get anyone else to print the discs. They are going to use this as an excuse to push blu ray, and to create more blu ray printing plants

Fact - Sony has several large movie companies signed on to release DVDs on BluRay in HD, and they are looking to expand the printing of the BluRay DVDs, since they're going to be putting out BluRay players and drives for computers

The blu ray discs hold much more information, but is it really necessary? any game is only going to use 5% of this disc space

The larger discs allow for game companies to make longer games with more assets, better production values, 7.1 surround for all games, and makes sure everythign can ship in HD, you can;t do that with regular DVDs

Speculation is that PS3 games may cost 70$ or sony will be selling them for 60$ and making less profit.

Games will start costing more, but probably no more than $60, since companies still need to stay competitive, but honestly, how many games do you buy every year? It's not going to be a huge increase, and if you buy Collector's Editions you're already willing to pay the extra money

In japan, HD TV is much more popular. I think the system will sell very well in japan, and pretty decent here, just from the name alone, even if the PS3 isn't worth it or even if it turns out to be less powerful than the 360. I don't know last i heard they haven't even finallized the specs of the PS3

The PS3 has radically different architecture, CPU-wise, than the X360, and it will take a couple years before anyone can truly harness everything the new architecture will allow, which means games will be getting radically better with time. PS3 easily has the same abilities as X360, it's just so new it's going to take developers a little bit of time to get used to it, but if you've seen the Killzone PS3 video and the MGS4 video then you should know both of those are what games are going to look like about a year or so after launch, and the PS3 runs UT2k7 very well. Personally, I was far more impressed by the MGS4 video than anything I've seen for X360, but GoW is close. Sony also has a huge, very loyal fanbase, which assures that it will have good sales numbers.

I'm going to get an Xbox 360. It comes out like 1.5 years earlier for 1. the thing looks awesome. the graphics look awesome. I'll take one,.

Wrong, PS3 is tenatively set to launch around spring or summer of next year, and many of the X360's "launch titles" won;t be out until that time anyway. The graphics merely look like those that we've seen in computer tech demos for a couple years now, and most of the original games, namely PD0 (which I'm still highly disappointed with) just look like graphically upgraded Xbox games, which hardly interests me. Now, honestly, all the real innovation lies in the Revolution, but I'm still skeptical about how much third-party support its going to get.

I wouldn't be surprized if the PS3 comes out at 450$ or 500$ and memory cards like 50$ or something rediculous. NO thanks

A recent report said the PS3 would cost no more than $400, with no prices mentioned for memory cards or games and no SET price for the system itself, but trust me, they will not make the price so high that no one wants to buy one, they are businessmen after all.

Also i hear you can use xbox live "silver" which is free now, Im guessing you get to play online, and download patches and what have you, just wont be able to download as much. Don't know what the premium service will offer over the silver service. My biggest gripe about Xbox live was that i had to pay for the service, so I've very happy to hear about this, although its just what i heard.

Xbox Live Silver is free, but lacks online play and several other features, though you will get to talk to friends and download patches and the like, but it's not like you're getting the full package.

I don't know any of this to be a fact.

Really? I couldn;t tell...

 

[VirusType2]

Actually i just read (i think in the link that CapStern just posted) that the PS3 is going to be $499. the Xbox 360 is starting at $299 i think $200 less!

And the Blu ray discs hold 50 gigs i bevieve and the Xbox discs hold 9gigs i think. And you know, you could use multiple discs, like we have been doing for the game cube. and you could probably put the discs on the optional hard disc and just use the play disc, like PC's To me this isn't that much of an issue as hardware performance is. More room on a disc is obviously better, but at what cost is what im saying? a high cost.

the only thing they can do is add more cutscenes and more voice-overs ? Just becuase you have more space on the disc do you think game devolopers are going to give you twice the game? lol

and i also read somewhere that the xbox games will be $60 not 70 and that the blue ray discs will be $70. I wouldn't have said it if i was guessing. I was just saying what i read on the net. lord knows not everything on the net is a fact. lol

Im not in charge of what things will cost, so i could be wrong is all im saying.

and I thought sony's machine isn't even final yet and i've heard so many things that point to Sony's machine not being as good for games with the hardware specs they announced. I spent a few hours reading up on the Xbox however the other night, but this was info from a few months ago, so please tell me any new info

The info i read was from a link that i found on Microsofts website, so even though it was on a microsoft forum. the forum is open to anyone, so not everyone there posting was a fanboy. just most of them

and thats too bad the free live service will not include online play. disapointing

Oh and by the way, the Killzone was a video clip of what the developers would like to make the game to be. Straight from their mouth. FAKE. That wasn't even a final PS3 it was like a prototype so it wouldn't make a difference one way or the other if it was actually rendered on a PS3 that didn't even exsist yet.

Anyway i read that both systems will be making games with graphics like that after the systems have been out for a while.

 

[dream431ca]

You get what you pay for....in this case...maybe not.

 

[VirusType2]

Yea i used to be the biggest Sony fan, but with their "don't buy a dreamcast, wait and wait and pay extra for our PS2" they killed Sega's dreamcast, then i didn't get much support for my dreamcast and so i buy a PS2, and almost shot myself in the head when i charged up $500 for the system a mem card and 2 games and the graphics were like worse.

they sell hype dude

 

[destrukt]

i'm still laughing at the people who paid $700AU for the ps2 when it first launched.

so far the ps3 is going to be a year later and more expensive than the xbox360 .. i wonder who will go well

 

[Icarusintel]

The link posted by Cpt. Stern is still speculation, which is all that exists at this point. The BluRay DVD drive will definitely come in handy, especially if you have an HDTV, as movie creators will have far more room on a BluRay DVD to put extras and make sure every movie is HD, which means no more multpile discs for a collector's edition of a movie, which will be nice.

If you've seen games like Xenosaga and the Final Fantasy games it is obvious that some of the games that have come out on the PS2 are incredibly long, but if their graphics were upped and regular DVDs were used they woulkd have multiple discs, whereas something of the same size, with next-gen graphics could easily be held on a single BluRay disc, which can cut down on manufacturing costs.

It's true that Sony's chip isn;t really oriented towards game manufacturers and is really more of a major technological advancement that is being shown off with the PS3. But with all the threading power available it isn;t hard to imagine games with far more complex AI being available on the PS3 once someone gets the hardware down.

Yeah, Microsoft is pulling a fast one on everyopne with their announcement of the Xbox Live Silver service, it's a very tricky marketing scheme if you ask me

The Killzone developers did admit it was realtime, but they also said, a few weeks ago or so that they had gotten their in-game graphics up to the level that was shown in the video and that they would quite possibly be even better than in the video when the game is released

Really, consoles shine brightest after about 3 years or so, when the companies have mastered the hardware, just look at MGS3, Shadow of the Collossus, and Black - all of which are on the PS2 and all of which show off graphics that I never even thought were possible on thew aging machine

 

[OCybrManO]

It's true that Sony's chip isn;t really oriented towards game manufacturers and is really more of a major technological advancement that is being shown off with the PS3. But with all the threading power available it isn;t hard to imagine games with far more complex AI being available on the PS3 once someone gets the hardware down.

The performance of the PS3 and Xbox360 in complex, branchy game code like the kind used in physics, AI, controls, and the like is still debatable. Some even speculate (based on all the available information) that the Revolution hardware may match them (or possibly even have an edge) in that category throughout the entire lifespan of the next-gen consoles... though, there is almost no information regarding the GPU power other than a few vague comments ranging from emphasizing gameplay instead of fancy graphics to specifically saying "a difference will not exist." It's confusing, to say the least.

 

[VirusType2]

Xbox 360 comes out on November 22 here. I've seen 360 games in action and its getting to the level where the graphics look like real life. I was watching T.v. and a commercial came on, I actually thought it was real for a few seconds I was watching it and then I started to realize it was computer generated.

Point is, 360 comes out in 18 days and by the time the PS3 comes out, the graphics won't be amazing anymore, they will be the norm. Sony doesn't even have any PS3 info on their website! It's like the thing doesn't even exsist. Oh, wait it doesn't.

and apparently the Xbox360 is almost too easy to program for--making some worry there will be shotty, quickly made games-something i will be watching out for. but on the plus side, its easy to make games for! and with microsofts (shit i forget what they are calling it) its really easy to port PC games for the Xbox360, whereas for the PS2 was said to be difficult to program. So by the time the PS3 comes out, the programers for Xbox360 will have had a lot of experience programing it and the games will be using all the power the 360 has. which is alot. While the PS3 programers will be trying to figure this thing out

I remember being quite surprized when i heard they were already cutting deals on chips for the 360 way back when the xbox was still relatively new, but now i see what they were doing. This is perfect timing.

In my best "The Ring" voice, " 18 days"

 

[Icarusintel]

The performance of the PS3 and Xbox360 in complex, branchy game code like the kind used in physics, AI, controls, and the like is still debatable. Some even speculate (based on all the available information) that the Revolution hardware may match them (or possibly even have an edge) in that category throughout the entire lifespan of the next-gen consoles... though, there is almost no information regarding the GPU power other than a few vague comments ranging from emphasizing gameplay instead of fancy graphics to specifically saying "a difference will not exist." It's confusing, to say the least.

This is why I don;t say anything about the Revolution's power, I mean, we know even less about it than we do either the X360 or the PS3, except for what the controller is like... I don;t think it will quite compete graphically, but the innovation with the controller is what will really count for them

I still have yet to mistake any games for real life, especially when it's in-game. Maybe you're only playing games for graphics, and if you are, that's kinda sad, because there is so much more to games than merely graphics. I'm getting a PS3 for the gameplay. There are several proven directors that consistently put out good games on Sony's hardware, which is why I support them. I can;t say the same for Xbox, and many of its good games have either been ports to other consoles or were ported later.

Actually, it will be perfect timing until the PS3 comes out. They will get the early market share, but there will still be plenty of holdouts for the PS3 and people who will be buying both. This doesn;t even factor in Revolution, which will also have plenty of people waiting for it. Each system is going to have plenty of people buying them that the companies making them will make money. There's going to be great games for all of them.

Personally, I'm skeptical about X360. All it has going for it at launch are graphics. None of the gameplay I've seen has truly impressed me or made me want to rush out and buy one. They've also been very tricky in talking about launch titles by making it seem like all of them would be available the day the system comes out, which is not true. One problem with putting out a system so early is that there are going to be very few games for it for a while. Most of the better games for X360 aren;t even coming out until next year, like Oblivion and GoW.

Eh, I even saw an X360 running in a store with COD2 in it and I was just thinking to myself the entire time that my computer makes COD2 looks just as good at the same framerate. I guess I'm just not impressed.

 

[Gray Fox]

But aren't the blue ray discs a lot more prone to scratches cause the information is stored very close to the surfaces, and I know that there have been new harcoating ways developed, but they can be used on the HD DVD to to make it stronger.

Anyway isn't it better to wait for the revolution to decide what you want to buy, cause it may be like the cube, that you have a lot of viarity of games then on previouse Nintendo consoles. I mean no matter what genre you liked you had it on the cube and it cost way less then the ps and xbox. Plus don't underestimate the power of a new controller. Lets be honest once the newness of the graphics go's away the xbox and the ps are going to look a lot less atractive. While the revolution might get well revolutionary games a long time after the graphics have been surpased.

 

[destrukt]

they have more power [better graphics] and that's the core reason for new consoles, innovative games are the job of the developers.

of course, with new cconsoles we expect new things like with xbox live becoming alot more advanced and the console in general, being wireless and so on, there's only so much you can expect unless you want it to do misc things like your computer, or make you coffee.

 

[Icarusintel]

Anyway isn't it better to wait for the revolution to decide what you want to buy, cause it may be like the cube, that you have a lot of viarity of games then on previouse Nintendo consoles. I mean no matter what genre you liked you had it on the cube and it cost way less then the ps and xbox. Plus don't underestimate the power of a new controller. Lets be honest once the newness of the graphics go's away the xbox and the ps are going to look a lot less atractive. While the revolution might get well revolutionary games a long time after the graphics have been surpased.

Even though the Revolution has an interesting new controller we have yet to see what they are going to do with it. It may end up shooting itself in the foot if developers have a hard time figuring out good ways for people to play games with it. I'm liking the controller more and more, but really, the Revolution's going to be cheap enough that you could buy one along with one of the other two if you save your money, and it's coming out later, so, that helps too.

 

[VirusType2]

One problem with putting out a system so early is that there are going to be very few games for it for a while. Most of the better games for X360 aren;t even coming out until next year, like Oblivion and GoW.

No matter when you release a new game system there are going to be very few games for it.
and isn't that always the case? there is always a game coming out later that you want. No matter what system I am always waiting for a game to come out. then once i buy that game, im waiting for something else.

Eh, I even saw an X360 running in a store with COD2 in it and I was just thinking to myself the entire time that my computer makes COD2 looks just as good at the same framerate. I guess I'm just not impressed.

Yea i saw it too, and it looks great. I mean, untill you get a game home, and play it, and start to have a good time, you are just looking at a video game. I don't get all excited when i see a few seconds of some random thing on t.v. its not unless i sit down in front of a movie or show and watch it that i get into it.

My computer cannot even come close to the power of the x360. If it could, i wouldn't be excited about buying one. I would have to buy a new computer spend about $1500 to compete with it.
I mean if you have a powerful game machine, then the only reason you might want one would be to get specific titles.

And as the programers figure out what the machine can do, and get more experienced, the games will be looking hot.

I mean i remember with the game cube, playing thier wave race game i was like, "this looks just like N64" but then after a while we get games like NFS: underground and RES evil 4 and its like. WOW!