Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3 - A Hardware Discussion
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 24, 2005 4:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
93 Comments
View All Comments
MDme - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
now i know what to buy :)SuperStrokey - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
lol, thats funnybldckstark - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
Having a PS2 and an XBOX I was not even thinking about buying a PS3 since the XBOX kicks the PS2's ace. (IMHO). After reading this article I have much more respect for the PS3 and now I don't have any idea which onw I will buy. My wife may force me to buy the PS3 if the 360 isn't as backward compatible as most want it to be.Maybe I will just use my unusually large brain to create a PS360 that will play everything. Oooh, wait, I gotta get a big brain first. Then a big p3nis. Or maybe just a normal one.
Furen - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#37: supposedly yes. Since it will have to be through hardcore emulation there will be issues (but of course). It wont be fully transparent like the ps2 but rather you'll have profiles saved on your harddrive which will tell the system how to run the games.SuperStrokey - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
I havnt been following the 360 too much (im a self admitted nintendo fanboy), but will it be backward compatible too? I heard it was still up in the air but as PS3 is going to be and revolution is going to be (bigtime) i would assume that 360 will be too right?ZobarStyl - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#32 is right: how many games get released for all 3 console with only minor, subtle differences between them? Most of the time, first party stuff is the only major difference between consoles. Very few 3rd party games are held back from the 'slower' consoles; most are just licensing deals (GTA:SA on PS2, for example). And if you look back, of the first party games lineup, XBox didn't have the most compelling of libraries, in my opinion.yacoub - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
imo, the revolution will be a loser in more than just hardware. i can't remember the last time i actually wanted to play any of the exclusive nintendo games. actually, i think for about one day i considered a gamecube for metroid but then i saw it in action at a friend's place and was underwhelmed by the gameplay. forget mario and link, give me splinter cell or gran tourismo or forza or... yeah you get the idea.nserra - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#27If you read the article carefully, you will see that since they are "weaker" pipelines, the 48 will perform like 24 "complete" ones.
I think with this Ati new design, there will be games where the performance will be much better, equal or worst.
But that’s the price to pay for complete new designs.
On paper Ati design is much more advance, in fact reminds the VOODOO2 design where there are more than one chip doing things. I think I prefer some very fancy graphics design over a double all easy solution.
Taracta - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
With 25.5 Gbs of bandwith to memory, is OoO (Out Of Order processing) necessary? Isn't OoO and its ilk bandwith hiding solutions? I have an issue with regards to Anandtech outlook on the SPPs of the CELL processor (I could be wrong). I consider the SPPs to be full fledge Vector Processors and not just fancy implementation of MMX, SSE, Altivec etc, which seems to be Anandtech's outlook. As full fledge Vector Processors they are orders of magnitude more flexible than that and as Vector Processors comparing them to Scalar Processors is erroneous.Another thing, RISC won the war! Don't believe, what do you call a processor with a RISC core with a CISC hardware translator around it? CISC? I think not, it's a RISC processor. x86 did win the procesor war but not by beating them but joining them and by extension CISC loss. Just needed to clear that up. The x86 instruction set won but the old x86 CISC architecture loss. The x86 insrtuction set will always win, fortunately for AMD because the Itanium was to have been their death. No way could they have copied the Itanium in this day and age which come to think of it is very unfortunate.
From you have the processor the runs x86 the best you will always win. Unless you can get a toehold in the market with something else such as LINUX and CELL!
CuriousMike - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
If it's a 3rd party game, it won't matter (greatly) which platform you pick, because developers will develop to the least-common-denominator.In the current generation, about the best one could hope for is slightly higher-res textures and better framerate on XBOX over ps2/gc.
IMO, pick your platform based on first-party games/series you're looking forward to. Simple as that.