Gadgetory

- One of the big pieces of news to come out of the E3 this year was the Microsoft confirmed they are working on the next Xbox. Still under the title of Project Scarlett, and will release sometime late 2020. Now we didn't get any in depth specs or anything, we don't know what's gonna be inside the system for sure, but they did talk numbers in terms of what it's going to be capable of. And those numbers sound pretty familiar. A few months prior to E3, PlayStation's Mark Cerny did an interview with Wired regarding what the PlayStation Five is gonna be capable of, and the numbers are pretty much the same thing that Microsoft announced. We're looking at systems that are gonna be capable of 8K resolution, 120 frames per second, and one specific piece of tech they referenced a lot is the fact that both systems are going be the first home consoles to start making use of SSD's which will dramatically improve load times. And that's basically all we really know about these two systems so far. We don't know the specific cards that are gonna be in them, although we know which companies they are partnered with. We don't know the processor, how much RAM, we just know, hey there's an SSD, and it's capable of 8K, 120 frames. So with that in mind, it's kinda raising the question of, how much are these systems gonna cost? Performance numbers are cool and exciting and all, but at the end of the day, cost is a very important figure to talk about. Because that's gonna be the number that helps a lot of people decide, which of these two systems to get, or whether or not they're even going to adopt the new generation of systems right away or not. So, hearing big numbers is cool, but it also gives you the thought of well, really how much is this gonna be? Because big numbers can be very dangerous. I mean, good examples of this are way back with the PS3, when that launched. How much it was running for turned a lot of people off compared to the 360. And the Xbox One had a lot of problems because it was a forced bundle with the Kinect at first which drove the cost even higher. So with those performance numbers in mind, let's take a look at the actual tech and how much it costs to make a machine like this. Now again, we do not know specific specs of what's going to be in these systems, but we could make some educated guesses based on the performance that's been talked about, as well as just little bits from articles including that Cerny interview. So to begin with, let's take a look at the processor. When talking to Wired, Cerny mentioned that specifically they'll be using AMD's new Zen 2 architecture, which makes sense, AMD has been the main partner for both PlayStation and Microsoft. And specifically, he mentioned making use of an eight core processor. Now those chips aren't actually out yet, but we do have MSRPs for when they'll be releasing, so as a similar example at eight cores, there's the Ryzen seven 300 X, which is priced at $399 dollars. We are already down the cost of a PS4 Pro. Now as for the GPU, again we know they're working with AMD, they've talked about 8K resolutions, and that it's going to have rate tracing. The thing about that, is we don't actually have any AMD cards priced out yet that have rate tracing, they're just not out yet. So the closest equivalent we have at the moment is the RX 5700 which goes for $379 dollars. Now if we wanna talk about the idea of rate tracing, if that makes things cost more, well an equivalent card from NVIDIA goes for 350 that has rate tracing. That's the RTX 2060. So price range is about the same, we're gonna stick with that 379 figure just as an example for now. One part of the system we do know at least a little more about is that it's going to include an SSD. Now according to Cerny, once again as a source, he's mentioning the fact that the SSD's they're putting in the PS5 is faster than anything currently available on the market. So the closest guess we can have right now, let's say they go for a launch bundle that has a 1 terabyte hard drive, well the fastest SSD you can get right now with that kind of size is gonna cost 355, again, almost as much as a PS4 Pro. One last part I wanna touch on is the RAM. Now no one has said anything about how much RAM they're gonna put in the systems, but based on the kind of performance they're talking about, and what we see in current systems, we're likely gonna see 16 gigabytes, which is another, you guessed it, $400 dollars. So the four parts we've talked about alone all roughly cost the same as a PS4 Pro. That means the PS5 is four PS4 Pros worth. That's a lot of money. Now to be fair, the amount it costs Microsoft or Sony to build a new system, is not the same as it takes you to build one individually for yourself, because, well what's costing them is very different. Yes they're buying parts, but they're buying them in massive bulk which brings down the individual price of each one. Really, where the cost is coming from is the development, putting the whole thing together, labor. All the stuff that goes into just making that system happen in the first place and get production going. All that considered though, even if the cost of producing an individual system is less that it would cost you to build one, it's still more than what they usually sell for. It's this kind of tradition in video game business that consoles are sold at a loss, or at a very very minimum profit. And the reason for this is that they wanna make systems as affordable as possible so that way once people buy them, they start buying all the other stuff related to the system, and that's really where the big profit comes from. Whether that's all the games you buy, they're licensed out by that company that they get a share of the sales. Buying additional controllers, buying accessories, buying branded stuff that's based on the systems. All that stuff comes together to yield a lot more profit to balance out the cost of selling those systems at a loss. The point of this is that game consoles are worth more than a lot of people realize. Especially when they are first coming out in this brand new tech. And that's always been I think one of the big strengths that consoles have in that argument of well should you buy a game console or own a gaming PC? Because in the console market, it's not only a very user friendly experience where you just buy it, plug it in your TV, and do initial setup and you should be good to go, but you're also getting all of that at a overall much better value than if you tried building something yourself. Now it's something that you're not gonna be able to upgrade as often, it's not something that's going to keep up with it, but that's the whole way that the console generation cycles work. Every few years they release a new one and that's a new spike of where we're gonna see that shift in what games can do. So how much are the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett gonna cost? I honestly don't know. Four, five, maybe six. At the end of the day though, I think it's gonna be worth it.