Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3 - A Hardware Discussion

System Costs

One thing that a surprising number of people seem to overlook is the idea that consoles are built to take a loss on the hardware itself.  If the Xbox 360 retails for $299, it may very well cost Microsoft $399, or even more.  This has been the way consoles have been manufactured for quite some time now, and it has not changed with the latest generation of consoles. 

However, given the very high system costs of the original Xbox, it isn’t surprising to see that Microsoft is quite concerned with keeping costs down to a minimum this time around.  There are a number of decisions that Microsoft has made in order to limit their loss on the 360 hardware.

First and foremost, Microsoft owns the IP in the Xbox 360 and thus they can handle manufacturing on their own without having to re-negotiate contracts with ATI or IBM.  It remains to be seen how much of a money saver this will be for Microsoft, but it does present itself as a departure from the way things were done the first time around for the folks at Redmond. 

Assuming Xenon is nothing more than 3 PPEs put on the same die coupled with twice the L2 cache, it looks like Xenon is a smaller chip than Cell. 

The Xenos GPU features a higher transistor count than the RSX (332M vs. 300.4M), but a lower clock speed. 

Microsoft didn’t skimp much on the CPU or GPU hardware, which isn’t surprising, but it is in the auxiliary hardware that the console ends up being cheaper in.  The best way to understand the areas that Microsoft didn’t spend money in, is to look at the areas that Sony did spend money in. 

The Xbox 360 is using a tried and true 12X dual layer DVD drive, probably very similar to what you can buy for the PC today.  A very popular drive format with mass produced internals is a sure fire way to keep costs down.  Sony’s solution?  A very expensive, not yet in production, Blu-ray drive.  As we mentioned earlier, the first Blu-ray players are expected to retail for more than $500.  The PlayStation 3 isn’t going to be successful as a $800 console, so we’d expect its MSRP to be less than $500, meaning that Sony will have to absorb a lot of the cost (initially) of including a Blu-ray player, until production picks up. 

Both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 feature wireless controller support, although Sony supports a maximum of 7 Bluetooth controllers compared to Microsoft’s 4 2.4GHz RF controllers. 

The PS3 also ships with built in 802.11b/g and three Gigabit Ethernet ports so the system can act as a Gigabit router right out of the box.  Adding wireless support isn’t a huge deal, but the physical layer as well as the antenna do drive costs up a bit.  The same goes for getting controllers to drive the three GigE ports on the unit. 

Sony also offers built in support for more USB 2.0 ports (6 vs 4), media card slots (Memory Stick, SD and Compact Flash) where the 360 has none and two HDMI outputs where the 360 only offers component.  Again, not major features but they are nice to have, and do contribute to the overall price of the system. 

The one difference that favors Microsoft however is the inclusion of a 2.5” HDD with the Xbox 360 console; Sony’s hard drive will be optional and won’t ship with the system.

In the end it seems that Microsoft was more focused on spending money where it counts (e.g. CPU, GPU, HDD) and skimped on areas that would have otherwise completed the package (e.g. more USB ports, built in wireless, router functionality, flash card readers, HDMI support in the box, etc...).  Whereas Sony appears to have just spent money everywhere, but balanced things out by shipping with no hard drive.