PS3 teardown: 30% fewer parts, $300 cheaper

When the gang at iSuppli first tore open a PlayStation 3 back in November 2006, they pegged the cost to build the $500 model was $805 in materials. Now they're back and looking inside the $400 version, which they estimate is $448.73 in parts -- still a loss leader for the company, but only by about one Ulysses S. Grant this time. The number of components has also dropped from 4,048 to just 2,820, and both the Cell processor and NVIDIA GPU have slimmed down from 90nm to 65nm. They suspect Sony might be able to lower costs and turn a profit sometime in 2009, but while you may be rooting for this generation's underdog, don't get your hopes up for a price drop any time soon.

[Gnormie @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:07PM]

Console makers in general don't make much money selling the console, they rake it in with the accessories/extras/games most of the time. Though the amount of money made back from games is dropping.

[Louis @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:45PM]

Console makers get lots back from software (they charge per unit). And see how hard they laugh when you tell your first statement to Nintendo. The Wii has been profitable since day one.

[Gnormie @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:10PM]

@ Louis
Hence, why I said 'in general'

[BobFromVegas @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:53PM]

Ya, but those sales are based on how well the console sells. Their profit may not come directly from consoles, but it's tied directly to a console's success.

[Shinigami @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:26PM]

@Gnormie
Thats what they want you to believe.

@Engadget
You're so MEAN!!!!!!!!
Yes, its my mistake for thinking PS3 gets some kind of price cut, but you're the mean one making it happen
/sarcasm

I'm happy that Sony now makes less loss per PS3 and I hope it will get a slim version in 2009 when IBM and Nvidia go 45-40nm techprocess. But till then all I'm about to buy is Xbox 360, its cheaper.

[Mike @ Dec 24th 2008 4:43AM]

Of course it will win. PS3 has caught up and overtaken the 360 in PAL regions, despite the 360 having a 18month exclusive head start. It's also outsold the 360 in the US in 2008, and is 2m ahead in Japan.

You would have to be an idiot to think that the PS3 is somehow the "generation's underdog". Clearly it's much superior tech to that Microsoft white turd, and it's the best value console by a mile.

[maty @ Dec 24th 2008 5:33AM]

@Mike

What sales figures are you referring to?

The PS3 only outsells the 360 in Japan, but as of September 2008 (before the 360 price cuts, which may alter things by the next quarter results) the PS3 was trailing worldwide by some 5 million units. In the UK (again, September 2008) the difference is some 900,000 units to the 360, and in the US (November 2008) its a whopping 5.9 million units.

And in Japan (Septemberr 2008), its actually 1.6 million, not 2 million as per your statement. And in Europe, it is only outside the UK it exceeds 360.

[Razorman @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:07PM]

Still not getting one.

[Ethan @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:16PM]

I don't think how much it costs them really factors into your decision now, does it?

[Razorman @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:20PM]

Nope. Still not getting one tho.

[RyanTV @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:10PM]

me either.... it would take both a nice juicy price drop as well as a smaller form factor to get me in.

[Taylor @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:10PM]

Was it really neccessary to come into a post about the 360, just to declare you aren't getting one, still?

[Taylor @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:11PM]

Was it really neccessary to come into a post about the PS3, to declare that you aren't getting one?

[Taylor @ Dec 24th 2008 4:13AM]

Oh, and my bad about the 360 thing. Kind of had it on my mind, because my mind automatically associates PS3-hating with the 360.

I'm no fanboi for either side though.

[kal326 @ Dec 24th 2008 2:32PM]

I got one, but stand alone blu-ray players weren't as cheap then. I bought a bundle Blockbuster was trying to unload for decently cheap. Came with a game, the Sony remote, Spiderman 3, an HDMI cable and a 12 week bluray-game rental card. I think I paid like $440 for it with tax.

So I got a blu-ray player that for a bonus also plays games. Right now I'm playing Fallout 3 and thank god somebody finally figure out how to make a decent PS3 game you don't spend 5-10 minutes installing before you get to play it.

[goods @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:10PM]

If I had to give one of the consoles up I'd give up my 360, no contest.

[Ethan @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:17PM]

Can I have it?

[Major4Play @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:17PM]

One of your consoles ? Try a girl/boyfriend ALOT more fun.

[iphoney @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:20PM]

I guess you don't like video games.

[goods @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:27PM]

I love video games, I just don't love my (3rd) 360 that is loud as all hell, built like a cheap toy and has proprietary extras. I do enjoy the couple shooters that are available on it though(GoW2/L4D), but seriously I haven't played one game on the 360 that is better than God of War, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, LBP, Warhawk, I could go on...

[iphoney @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:34PM]

please do go on sir, because all you fanboys do is repeat same 5 or 6 games when making an argument about exclusives.

[goods @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:50PM]

I'm a fanboy of video games, not one particular system, been that way since the Odyssey. Did you not read the part where I said I owned and play both? the one system has given me a mountain of headaches, the other has not, sorry if you don't like to hear it, but it's true and I'm not the only one.

If you keep hearing about the amazing exclusives then I guess you should take that as a hint because they are amazing. It's not my fault those list of games happen to be the exclusives. Don't worry though, 09 is looking even better. I'm looking at you God of War 3.

[iofthestorm @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:55PM]

Proprietary games? Name a system that has non-proprietary games, please.

[gonintendo @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:13PM]

Funny you talk about headaches. It took me about 3 hours to figure out what ports I needed to open in order to get an online game going in Battlefield bad company. Even more to get voice chat working. How long did it take my friend to get his 360 online? 5 minutes.

[Saad Rabia @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:23PM]

goods, cut the BS, and let us talk business. How much are you selling your Xbox 360? Can you post it on eBay or something?

I'm a serious buyer, I swear.

[Zeus.:God @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:49PM]

I can only laugh at "goods"...

[goods @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:03PM]

@saad rabia I'm not selling it, I wouldn't give it away to my worst enemy. Like I said, I do enjoy the couple of shooters that are worth playing on it, when it works that is.

@ iofthestorm learn to read, I said proprietary extras, like the hard drive... you don't want to go there.

@gonintendo sorry your internet service/skills are not so good. I've had no problems with my PS3 and have played a lot of titles online. And for your information the 360 needs ports opened up for some games as well.

@zeus:god I can only laugh at your name...since you had nothing to offer otherwise.

[Ethan @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:11PM]

haha goods doesn't have the 'goods.'

[Booshack @ Dec 23rd 2008 9:25PM]

@Saad Rabia:
Don't think you will save much after shipping to Abu Dhabi...

[Ballmerisaloon @ Dec 23rd 2008 10:41PM]

@gonintendo Re:Ports etc.

It took my dad 2 hours on the phone to me to guide him through the installation of his new wifi router.

It takes me 2 minutes

Speed is directly proportional to experience

I suspect you, sir are a noob, who knows jack shit about tech

[gonintendo @ Dec 24th 2008 6:13PM]

Actually, I don know Jack Shit. Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer
magnate, married O. Schitt, the owner of Needeep N. Schitt, Inc. They had
one son, Jack.

In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple
produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull
Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt.

Against her parents' objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high
school dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt
divorced. Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and because her kids were
living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.

Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a
rather nervous disposition named Chicken Schitt. Two of the other six
children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout
childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual
ceremony. The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the
Schitt-Happens nuptials. The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Horse.

Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt.

[AVG @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:16PM]

It really does blow my mind that Sony went from the complete dominance of last generation to being the "underdog" this time.

This is not an open invitation for everyone to voice their opinions on WHY that happened. We've all seen/heard it 10,000 times before.

[Rob Conway @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:23PM]

What? Are you trying to tell me what I can write about in a comment? Well, that's just mean. What did I ever do to you to make you hate me?

[AVG @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:31PM]

Okay. Except for you, Rob.

[Ted @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:30PM]

It shouldn't be too shocking if you look at the history of things:

PS1: Successful due to lack of competition. Sony saw a soft market and went after it. Where else was a developer going to go in the mid to late 90's? Saturn was DOA. N64 was technically crippled by insufficient storage to produce the type of titles the big third parties wanted to make. Sony owned the console gaming space for a period of 4-5 years and built up some big money making franchises that would hold over to the PS2.

PS2: Successful due to the momentum the PS1 built and also didn't face much real competition. Developers were already very happy making good money developing for Sony and weren't going to take a big risk on Nintendo & Sega -- both of whom were coming off failures and still fumbling around with non-standard DVD mediums in an era where DVD playback was a big console selling point. As soon as Microsoft got into the game offering a DVD based console Sony actually had some competition. Instead of facing the competition they decided to milk the PS2 for another couple years (as they did with the PS1 before it) and they just got caught sleeping. Which is inexcusable given Microsoft's quick development of the Xbox 1. It was no shock they could put together a new console quickly and they beat Sony to the punch with the 360 by a significant lead time. Developers have no loyalty -- they just want to make money -- so a lot of them jumped ship.


If you look at Sony's other products over the last 20 years this is a trend they have repeated many times. They get beat by upstarts, they retreat and try to own the premium (perception or reality) space where they eventually price themselves out of competition and then they give up or they become a niche player. Sony actually has a long track record of not being able to capitalize on being the first mover in a market.

[giuliop @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:36PM]

It also blew my mind when Sony went from #1 portable audio maker to underdog. Or when they abandoned the Aibo line to make such things as the "Rolly". Or when they periodically introduce the nth proprietary format despite their long history of utter failures. The list goes on and on.
Sony is like a schizophrenic being; part ingenious, part moronic.

[AVG @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:56PM]

What? The N64 and Xbox weren't competition? Get real.

[Grant @ Dec 24th 2008 1:03AM]

As much as i loved my N64, it wasn't really competition for the PS1. Games were released far too infrequently to consider it real competition.

As far as the xbox is concerned, it wasn't as competitive as it could have been due to coming into the game late. It fared well for it's situation, but it never could quite catch the PS2. The 360 seems to have this similar benefit this round, such as PS2 did last time.

[AVG @ Dec 24th 2008 2:05AM]

Those systems WERE competition. They were just the losers. Very rarely does a console generation distribute its earnings equally among all competitors. Just because Sony won doesn't mean they just stepped in it and voila, or that all the others were shit and Sony lucked out. They worked to climb to the top, they didn't get it on fluke. That's why this PS3 business is baffling. They seemed to have their head on straight. But saying that they've never had real competition is totally ignorant.

[animeGhost @ Dec 25th 2008 2:01AM]

@ giuliop:

You know if it weren't for sony's nth proprietary standard you wouldn't have such wonderful things like vhs, cd, dual layer dvd, or blu-ray...(yeah sony had a hand in all of that... look it up) ...and u dont seem to wanna talk about microsofts downfalls like windows vista that everyone loves to hate... or all the shit u have to buy just to use your xbox.

[Ray @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:19PM]

Hey, if i wanted a cheaply built ps3 i'd buy an Xbox 360.... ZING!

[John @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:23PM]

That made me laugh because it's true!

[Kimleng @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:00PM]

Maybe Sony can steal Job's line:

"We don't know how to make a $299 console that's not a piece of junk."

[John @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:40PM]

problem being that the PS2 did in fact cost $299 previously and was most certainly not a piece of junk.

[Markarian @ Dec 23rd 2008 8:45PM]

I think the real winner in this console war are IBM and Foxconn. They're triple-dipping, responsible for the CPUs/Manufacturing of all three current-gen consoles. My hat's off to them.

[iphoney @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:25PM]

They'll never recover the total losses from this bland dvd player

[Anthony-E @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:22PM]

Except for the fact that even if it didn't play games, it's still not a "bland dvd player", it's an amazing blu-ray player, so you're comment has about 0 truth to it. You're such a fanboy / tool.

[Nomi @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:44PM]

Not to mention great at upconverting DVDs...

[goods @ Dec 23rd 2008 6:54PM]

sounds like someone bought a 360 hd dvd drive and a ton of hd dvd's and is still a tad bitter about it.

[iphoney @ Dec 23rd 2008 7:03PM]

No body even cares about blu-ray (atleast 20% of people who own a PS3 don't even know they have a Blu-ray player *source: cnn money). Up-converting DVD players cost around $50. and should keep consumers happy until streaming media becomes ubiquitous. Also spending $400 on a system with only 360 hand-me-downs (done poorly might i add; just look at orange box) and 5 or 6 decent exclusives is just not worth it, especially if you currently own a 360.