Xbox360とPS3との熾烈な競争

PS3とXbox360は、
ハードウェアのコンセプトや発売ゲームが似通っている為に、
激しい競争状態なんだとか。

この競争に勝つには、
どちらが先に製造コストを下げて、
安価にゲーム機を供給できるかにかかっているそうで。

ゲーム機のコストダウンには、
トランジスタの実装密度を上げて、チップのサイズを小さくし、
電流の消費を減らし、冷却の手間を減らすことらしい。

Xbox360は発売開始から200ドルの削減が可能だったのに対し、
PS3は40ドルのみで、しかも赤字なんだとのこと。

PS3 and the 360: The race to 65nm
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070205-8767.html

Today, the battle is very much between Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3, with Nintendo opting to play a different kind of game with the Wii.

As the 360 and PS3 are closely matched in terms of performance and the types of games they play,

the winner may be the company that reduces the cost of their platform the fastest.

One of the best ways to reduce manufacturing costs of any high-end electronic devices is to use a die shrink,
where a more fine-grained optical process allows more transistors to be packed into the same area.

In the case of a game console,
the same number of transistors can be delivered in a smaller area and with lower power dissipation,
lowering the cost of manufacturing the console by lowering the cost per-chip and cutting down on the amount of active cooling needed.

For both the 360 and PS3, the big move is from a 90nm process to a 65nm one.

A report in the Chinese-language paper Commercial Times estimates that Microsoft could reduce the cost of the CPU, northbridge, and GPU on the 360 from about $200 to $150 with a 65nm migration.

The research firm iSuppli estimated that the total bill-of-material (BOM) cost of the Premium Xbox 360 is down to about $323 from $525 at launch, which would significantly help Microsoft’s margins.

iSuppli puts the BOM cost of the premium PS3 at $840,
which means Sony is losing as much as $240 on each unit.
A similar component price reduction from the move to a 65nm process would lower this loss to under $200 per console.