"Series S has been very impactful for us. As we design our new consoles for the new generation, we're very much looking forward through the generation to be thinking ahead - like, how does this work? - and that's why we got to two consoles at the same time," Goossen continued. "We are facing a big change in how consoles are designed. I believe when we first started building the original Xbox 360 - the smallest one without the HDD - that cost us about $460. By the end of the generation it cost us around $120 - and that cost reduction path was driven principally by silicon cost reduction."
To put that into perspective, Xbox 360 launched with individual CPU and GPUs, both fabricated at 90nm. By the generation's end, those two components had been combined into a single chip, delivering a significant cost reduction in its own right, and they were also delivered using a much smaller process (possibly as low as 32nm on the final model). Between launch and the end of the 360's lifecycle, the machine had actually transitioned through several fabrication nodes. Its successor - Xbox One - saw its processor revised just once, down from 28nm to 16nm FinFET. Cost reduction opportunities were thin on the ground for this generation and will be even more constricted going forward.
"Moore's Law is certainly not dead! Moore's Law is continuing and we have a good path to 5nm and 3nm, and those are going to bring improved performance and good power," enthuses Goossen. "What they're not bringing any more is a good cost reduction cost per transistor - and so this has foundational impacts to console development, because now we'll get cost reductions, but they're slowing down and it won't be nearly the magnitudes that we've seen before."
"And so that was another one of the reasons why we felt that we really had to do Series S at the beginning because we had to design for the future. For the first time, we had to have the entry-level console at the beginning. Previous generations were kind of easy because at the beginning of the generation, you make something really expensive - put as much silicon and as much performance as you could into it - then you would just ride the cost reduction curves down to mass market prices. That's not there anymore," Goossen explains
Source
I guess we wont see any price cut until the end of the next gen effectively alienating a lot of casual and low income gamers
not a big fan of the Series S but i get his point
To put that into perspective, Xbox 360 launched with individual CPU and GPUs, both fabricated at 90nm. By the generation's end, those two components had been combined into a single chip, delivering a significant cost reduction in its own right, and they were also delivered using a much smaller process (possibly as low as 32nm on the final model). Between launch and the end of the 360's lifecycle, the machine had actually transitioned through several fabrication nodes. Its successor - Xbox One - saw its processor revised just once, down from 28nm to 16nm FinFET. Cost reduction opportunities were thin on the ground for this generation and will be even more constricted going forward.
"Moore's Law is certainly not dead! Moore's Law is continuing and we have a good path to 5nm and 3nm, and those are going to bring improved performance and good power," enthuses Goossen. "What they're not bringing any more is a good cost reduction cost per transistor - and so this has foundational impacts to console development, because now we'll get cost reductions, but they're slowing down and it won't be nearly the magnitudes that we've seen before."
"And so that was another one of the reasons why we felt that we really had to do Series S at the beginning because we had to design for the future. For the first time, we had to have the entry-level console at the beginning. Previous generations were kind of easy because at the beginning of the generation, you make something really expensive - put as much silicon and as much performance as you could into it - then you would just ride the cost reduction curves down to mass market prices. That's not there anymore," Goossen explains
Source
I guess we wont see any price cut until the end of the next gen effectively alienating a lot of casual and low income gamers
not a big fan of the Series S but i get his point
Last edited: