The “Break it Down” Blog

Dell selling XBox 360 Premium for $350. Be sure to use the coupon code “C99$273GQ1L4W8″ (without quotes) which knocks off an additional $10. (Link from Gizmodo)

I’m not sure yet if I believe all this anti-hype about the PS3 just yet. So far the rumors read something like this:

• All the technology in the PS3 (BluRay player, Cell processor, nVidia graphics processor, memory) are way to expensive and are causing the PS3 to hit a much higher price point than thought ($600) which causes it to price itself out of many people’s wallets. Some folks say that Sony is already taking a $3-400 loss on each PS3 unit in order to even bring the price down to acceptable consumer levels.
• In addition to the expense of the tech, there is concern that trying to fit all this next generation hardware into the small form factor case (which actually isn’t that small) is turning out to be a problem both due to shrinkage and heat dissipation issues.
• PS3 will be plagued with bugs as the entire machine from drive to processor are first generation and don’t have sufficient time in consumer or tester hands.
• Development kits cost astronomical amounts of money as well as development costs for the new operating system/platform which is causing less main stream developers to shy away from delivering anything on the PS3 platform.
• There is a concern that even if the PS3 is better than the XBox 360, many people (considering the price difference) will feel that the XBox 360 is “good enough”, especially when combined with the fun and tactile feel of the Nintendo Wii.
• Interestingly enough, both Microsoft and Sony are touting the Wii as a perfect match as a “fun/interactive/simple” console in conjunction with their big/beefy/next generation consoles. The idea is to get consumers to cough up enough cash on the XBox and Wii that they will say “Oh I can’t even consider a PS3, I already have 2 consoles!”. Interesting strategy…

I can’t speak to any of these points. The hardware and price concerns all sound legit to me. Even just considering putting together a computer using all top-of-the-line components always tends to run you between $3-4k. So saying that the PS3 is around $1k to produce each unit and they are trying to clear them out for $600 is not too far fetched. I have also been reading on AVS quite a bit recently that the PS3 was aparently confirmed to be using HDMI 1.3 chips. That specification wasn’t finalized until just recently, so they fact that even the HDMI chips are next gen adds validity to the comment that the entire machine is either a next-gen-hardware-wet-dream-waiting-to-happen… or a goddamn nightmare as they work out the kinks. Let’s just hope they have a flashable bios on that badboy. I can’t believe that with a first gen chip on a first gen motherboard they some how knocked all the kinks out, no matter who made the chips. Either way I’m still very interested in the hardware to see what it can do after the first year and developers start to feel more comforatable with it and development costs decrease. I’ll tell you this much, the only think that makes me consider being a first-generation consumer of the PS3 is the BluRay player functionality for my future HDTV I haven’t bought yet. I think this may be what Sony is banking on after all.

As an owner of an XBox 360 I can tell you that the machine is most likely “good enough” unless the PS3 woops all over it with processing power which we are hearing may not be the case. Unfortunately hard numbers like triangle fill rates mean nothing anymore. I know there are those of you reading this thinking “Yes they do, they give you a relative number to judge from”, they don’t; they really don’t. I had a friend remind me recently that the triangle fill rate on the PS2 was off the charts on paper. I mean we are talking ass-raping numbers here. However in practice the XBox dominated the PS2 for most of the next-gen titles as far as graphical quality goes. The same goes here with the PS3, the numbers don’t look out of control but the hardware on the machine, if utilized, could really make mince-meat out of polygons. I guess we’ll wait and see. (Digg this)