XBox 360 cost breakdown

[Vandenh]

Applied Market Intelligence have opened up an XBox 360 and made a neat little list (http://www.isuppli.com/news/xbox/) of all the components and their (assumed) cost. Pretty interesting.

Factoring in costs for the hard disk, the DVD drive, enclosures, the Radio Frequency (RF) receiver board, power supply, wireless controller, cables, literature, and packaging – the total BOM cost for the Xbox 360 Premium reaches $525, well above the retail price of $399. The high BOM cost for the Xbox 360 is not unusual.

[Dabombpizza]

This is the second (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7390) cost break down that has been posted. Is this any more credible? Once again, these are only just estimates so we can't really tell how much MS is losing. But, we can tell how much we save if we wanted to build our own :D

[Vandenh]

Probably the same report... this one just has a nice breakdown so it is easy for people to check the prices of components.

[Citizen Philip]

IR posted something like this, as already mentioned. I put another link in the thread (page 1 I believe) that has a second review. One says they lose money the other says they make money.

Microsoft is still able to bankroll a manned trip to Mars out of their cash assets, so really. No biggie.

[goc_sin]

Microsoft owns all the chips this time, so the CPU, Chipset and GPU should be much cheaper than the xbox. This way they can choose where to have them manufactured, such as 3rd world countries with child labor. ;)

[TrackZero]

The question should be, why in the world would anyone care what it costs MS? They're so far in the black right now it's just silly. They won't be running out of money anytime soon. It's Sony people should be worrying about, if they don't price the PS3 correctly. They're the ones having business problems. Too low and they take too far a loss, too high and noone will buy their console. That'll be what interests me. MS could literally be loosing $300 per unit and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

The question should be, why in the world would anyone care what it costs MS? They're so far in the black right now it's just silly. They won't be running out of money anytime soon. It's Sony people should be worrying about, if they don't price the PS3 correctly. They're the ones having business problems. Too low and they take too far a loss, too high and noone will buy their console. That'll be what interests me. MS could literally be loosing $300 per unit and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

Well, this is a very intersting look at what it costs to make a next gen system. Granted, there are a lot of assumptions, but pretty smart ones. On the flip, look at Sony ... basically, take this cost and add in a Blu Ray and you can get some kind of general idea of how much that will cost to make. How much of a loss do you think they are prepared to take per system? Just fodder for thought really ... nothing to be taken too seriously

[TrackZero]

Well, this is a very intersting look at what it costs to make a next gen system. Granted, there are a lot of assumptions, but pretty smart ones. On the flip, look at Sony ... basically, take this cost and add in a Blu Ray and you can get some kind of general idea of how much that will cost to make. How much of a loss do you think they are prepared to take per system? Just fodder for thought really ... nothing to be taken too seriously

Well, the previous article about Sony's low yield on their cell processors put those $50 more than MS is spending on theirs (per this report at least), plus Blu Ray, and the difference is price for their GPU solution. Again, if this report is near the ball and using it as a base to add from, I'd guesstimate the PS3 is going to cost Sony $550-700 American at least. How they'll price that though, beats me.

It's something to keep in mind too that all these costs go down over time and the console is usually marked to become profitable on it's own sales half-way through the system's lifespan.

Interesting stuff though, but I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3 is $500-550 American to begin with, any less than that and I think it'd be too much for Sony's bank account. I don't think they can afford to take more than a $150 hit per unit.

But again, this is just my best guess, I'm sure I'm off by a few hundred here and there. But I do believe Ken K. when he said people should get a second job to afford the PS3, I think he was serious. ;)

[mister_slim]

This is the second (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7390) cost break down that has been posted. Is this any more credible? Once again, these are only just estimates so we can't really tell how much MS is losing. But, we can tell how much we save if we wanted to build our own :D
This is the same breakdown, from iSuppli. I think their estimates are a little high, but iSuppli is usually pretty dependable. This is something they specialize in. The Merrill-Lynch breakdown seemed rather more speculative.

[drakkarim]

that's the problem with all these, they're 'speculations', i.e. at best; guesses. none of them seem to factor in long term contract volume pricing/discounts or cobranding/price sharing (getting your name associated with a hot item is always 'worth' something finanacially).

i believe if you look at the FINAL cost of these things under contract, rather then "oh gee i want to build my own 360 and buy 10 parts..." stupid guesstimates, you'd find that ms is hardly losing what they publicly pretend they're losing, if they're losing anything at all...

[SuperMonkeyFighter2]

that's the problem with all these, they're 'speculations', i.e. at best; guesses. none of them seem to factor in long term contract volume pricing/discounts or cobranding/price sharing (getting your name associated with a hot item is always 'worth' something finanacially).

i believe if you look at the FINAL cost of these things under contract, rather then "oh gee i want to build my own 360 and buy 10 parts..." stupid guesstimates, you'd find that ms is hardly losing what they publicly pretend they're losing, if they're losing anything at all...

True, man ... but these speculations do give a good, fun basis of convo as long as they're not taken too seriously.

[mister_slim]

i believe if you look at the FINAL cost of these things under contract, rather then "oh gee i want to build my own 360 and buy 10 parts..." stupid guesstimates, you'd find that ms is hardly losing what they publicly pretend they're losing, if they're losing anything at all...
But you'll never see that, so you do what you can. iSuppli's numbers tend to be better than most. Unless you have copies of MS's contracts lying around?