News AMD leak suggests Xbox One Slim variant plans

For people to make the leap from 'a cost-reduced derivative in 20nm technology.' all the way to cheaper and slimmer Xbone seems like wishful thinking to me. What's more likely is the Xbone will stay the same but with higher profit margins.

 

A slim Xbox or ps4 after a year or release seems optimistic, what id think would happen is more profit for Microsoft and Sony.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft were tempted to take the slim option tbh. The PS4 has such an incredible lead on the Xbox that I'm sure reinventing it would only be a positive for sales. Previous 'slim versions' have done well in the past and it would put the xbox back in the public eye a bit. Still goes to show how important that initial announcement and hype is, Microsoft really messed that up big time there.

I would have thought Microsoft would be far more interested in getting more consoles into people's homes rather than the profit margins on the consoles themselves. After all, the money is made in the games, not the hardware.

 

A slim console variation just over a year after launch? No way. It won't come until 3-4 years after the original launch at the earliest, but as others have said, Microsoft may take it as an opportunity to simply save some money and either reduce retail cost or bump their profit margin, whilst retaining the existing design.

Of course, the PS4 uses the exact same CPU (bar the 150Mhz difference), so a die shrink will allow Sony to do exactly the same.

 

Just an FYI to all of those who claim "profit". Neither make profit on their consoles. The profit comes from interactive purchases, accessories and games.

The same applied to the old consoles that took around 2 years to hit a break even point.

 

@Maki role, you hit the nail on the head by saying how important the initial announcement and hype is. I even wonder if it's so important that no matter what Microsoft do it's already to late, has the horse already bolted.

The break even point only came when it cost less to make them than they sold for, the sooner they can reduce manufacturing cost the sooner they can reach that break even point.

That's why it's unlikely that a reduction in manufacturing cost will be passed onto the consumer.

 

I don't think it is too late tbh. Sony cocked up the PS3 announcement massively back in the day, the console came out over a year after the 360, was vastly more expensive, lost it's signature new controller and they focused on the blu ray player over the games. The games they did show they pretended to be live action when they were obviously pre-rendered CG with far too much fidelity to be real time, they eventually had to backtrack on this. The initial sales figures were poor too as there weren't really any games either.

Sure it may not have Xbox 360 or Wii sales numbers, but their branding survived and the numbers did recover, and now they're in the lead again. Goes to show in the long run, it doesn't matter as much as people thing.

Also, for me the Xbox hasn't had its big hitters yet. IMO it's a Halo box, I'm grabbing one for the MCC coming out in a few days, no doubt many others will follow suit for that and the upcoming main games in the series.

 

Exactly! A die shrink will result in profits finally for the console manufacturers as currently there isn't any. Once the profit hits the tipping point a price drop or smaller console will be released to take advantage of this to re-launch the brand again.

 

I saw this floating around but didn't really read much into it tbh. If all it's going off of is that someone has worked on a die shrink of the console APU then it doesn't say much. I mean it doesn't mean they worked on it until completion. And we could all guess that a die shrink was being worked on and that a slim version would hit at some point in the future. Just because it's getting a die shrink it doesn't mean they'll introduce a slim version, at least not yet.

 

Don't forget, the 360 slim was only so popular because it fixed the many and varied hardware issues that plagued the 'fat' 360.

A lot of people got handed them as warranty replacements, that's how I got my 360S but no doubt it was counted towards the 'sales' figures.

 

Not that i know but was the reduction in manufacturing costs passed onto the consumer with the previous gen consoles, or did the price stay pretty much the same thought out their lifetime.

 

xbox 360 was £279 with 20GB HDD fifa 06 with it , right now a new xbox 360 with 500gb hdd and fifa 15 is £209

 

The shrink wasn't passed on for a number of months as the console made a loss as mentioned in a few posts above. It was only when profits were being made that the console got the price drops in order to try and gain more market share.

Cheers

 

Expect of course for the fact that the contracts between AMD and the console manufacturers are 100% secret and it is complete speculation if, when and to what extent AMD will pass potentially existing savings on to the console manufacturers.
After all, AMD will have had to pay for R&D, factory upgrades and so on to make the die shrink possible in the first place...

 

Consoles are inferior in every way to PCs and a Heresy for any PC Gamer!

 

Not you again.

If anyone wants a laugh, check out his post history.