Xbox One $499 Cost Not A ‘Ridiculous Price Point,’ But A PS4 Hardware Comparison Says Otherwise
The Xbox One $499 price point is being defended by Microsoft, but what does a Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4 hardware comparison reveal?
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the announcement of the Xbox One $499 price point after all the other Microsoft stumbles had some critics claiming Sony has already won the latest console war with the PlayStation 4.
The Xbox One’s price is a good $100 more expansive than the Sony PlayStation 4. The PS4 pre-orders are already beating the Xbox One due to the pricing. The only news is that the Xbox One, PS4 game prices will remain at $60 despite rumors they may jump to $70.
Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, defended the Xbox One’s $499 price tag as not being unreasonable:
“It’s a lower number than some of the analysts had forecasted. We’re over-delivering value against other choices I think consumers can get. Any modern product these days, you look at it [and] $499 isn’t a ridiculous price point. We’re delivering thousands of dollars of value to people, so I think they’re going to love it when they use it.”
But is the cost of a Xbox One a “ridiculous price point” based upon a hardware comparison? Both the Xbone and the PS4 share similar hardware from AMD. AMD claims Microsoft and Sony did not know they were both working with AMD on designing the next generation consoles. They both have a 1.6 GHz 8-core Jaguar CPU, 800 MHz GPU, 8 GB of memory, a 500GB HDD, Blu-ray drive, WiFi, 4K or Ultra HD HDMI, and USB 3.0.
A Xbox One and PlayStation 4 hardware comparison shows the main difference lies in the GPU and memory systems. The Xbox One has 768 shader cores while the PS4 boasts 1152. This means the peak shader throughput is 1.25 TeraFLOPS/s versus 1.84 TeraFLOPS/s. Keep in mind that video games tend to be GPU bottlenecked, not CPU limited.
The memory systems are also significantly different. The Xbox One combines 8 GB of 2133 MHz DDR3 memory with 32 MB of embedded memory. The PlayStation 4 skips the eSRAM and provides 8 GB of 5500 MHz GDDR5 memory. This means the Xbox One provides 68.3 GB/s and 102 GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the PS4 once again wins with 176 GB/s.
So it could be argued that you’re not getting what you paid for with the $499 Xbox One price point. The increased cost of the Kinect 2.0 could be factored in, but that debate is pretty much a wash considering the increased cost of PS4 controllers with their touchscreens.
Do you feel gamers are being xboned by the Xbox One $499 price point?
