matt360

These iSupply articles are pointless. All businesses balance their product offerings with low (or even negative) margin products in order to gain market share, and high margin add ons designed to make the overall business profitable. Why is this a problem?

With Microsoft making little or no money on the 360, they have to recoup somewhere. Give away the razor and sell the blades, it's business 101.

It really matters less how much something costs to manufacture than it does how much it would cost you to make it yourself. Try making your own Coca Cola some day, I guarantee the raw materials will come out to much less that .75 a can.

Next up: iSupply breaks down the cost to manufacture a copy of Adobe CS3 (Hint: waaaay less than $1799.99!)

shimmer

Personally, I find this to be ridiculous. Why can't console developers use a common standard that is accepted in the pc market? Consoles are basically pcs anyways.

mechfluff

But I still prefer the Xbox games and controller over the ones offered for the ps3.

awdark

I would guess that people don't transfer more stuff on the ps3 because they don't know that they can use a common usb stick drive to do that.

It's really a lot easier since the PS3 doesn't lock your user profiles,game saves, into a drm scheme.

Techguy1138

Yes, Sony gives free online play but the experience is nowhere near as robust as on the 360. XBox Live is well worth the $4 a month.

Blu-Ray is single-speed reading and even with installs, framerates on some PS3 games are choppy.

You note that the Elite costs $50 less than the now-discontinued 80GB PS3 and then elaborate that you've spent another $320 on your PS3. What is your point there?

Both platforms have advantages and drawbacks.

-signed, a PS360 owner

OMG! Ponies!

(i mean both are made, isntalled software, cased and packaged, is there someting im missing???)

esh-satril

In case anyone's curious, this is the hard drive I was talking about:

[www.newegg.com]

Cake_Eater

You're doing it wrong.

Cobolman2

Cake_Eater

The difference between the standard 20GB and 120GB is amazing. I've downloaded virtually ever demo and XBL demo and I still have gobs of space left.

navstar

mconheady

matt360

1roll20s

So, what stops Microsoft from doing something similar, and providing an inexpensive harness that doesn't interfere with the industry-standard connections, while still allowing the drive to be easily removable?

Greed.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

nikkomorocco

fastm3driver

Totorototoro

dbc

Best Microsoft Apologist comment ever.

They made it proprietary for one reason-to make money on it, and prevent people from going to Newegg to get a bigger drive without giving MS a cut. Just typical console business sense.

Making it easy to share with your friends? LOL.

Totorototoro

Sockpuppet

cygnusx8

It's about selling a specialty part to a specialty product. It always makes the items more expensive.

Sometimes I wonder how many people realize what it takes to make a console. You need an INSANE amount of cash to do it. I swear some people think that from the get go you just plop some parts in a plastic case and charge double.

The amount of R&D, licensing, and employee overhead is huge...and to fund that you need a massive warchest. And to get that massive warchest you have to sell things at large profits.

BonoMan

SigmundTheSeaMonster

Rhainor

lecti

tlamming

discounteggroll

Sugadadee

Sugadadee

I'd like a blank one for $75.

(Just went through this last week, paid $100 for a 20gb replacement when mine went bad)

jd_cincy

Y2KGTP

dremon21

smcallah

robotleawesome

Sam_Zebian

Really, is this surprising to anyone? This is rudimentary business economics.

makanai

All_Thumbs

Since when in time did accessories not become the higher profit margin product?

Biscuitcleaver

Putting it in the manual is not advertising. That's called a "features list". Why wouldn't Sony advertise the drive upgradeability? I think we all know the answer to that question (hint: it's shaped like a $500 80 GB PS3).

Also, any speed gains from the install are usually destroyed by the 1x read speed from the disc. One of the drawbacks of BD gaming.

A lot of games install. I have three games - Heavenly Sword, Assasin's Creed, and Uncharted. Both HS and AC require 2GB of drive space for the install. The load time on Heavenly Sword is a huge PITA. Not a dealbreaker, but a definite minus.

@Rodime: Typically, consoles are initially sold at a loss. Both the Wii and 360 are sold at a profit, with the margin on the 360 being slimmer than that of the Wii. The off-the-shelf cost helps keep down costs.

OMG! Ponies!

Rodime

Tread lightly with that PS3 FUD. Not all games install automatically. Some do and its horrendous. The upside is it reduces load time whereas you don't always have the option with the 360.

Sony does advertise the drive upgradability, but that falls to people actually having to read the manual.

Shnyzx

julian

The fact that Sony doesn't advertise the drive upgradeability shows that the marketing department still has its collective head up its proverbial ass.

*the downside to the PS3 is that games install themselves. if I wanted that PITA, I'd go back to gaming on my PC.

OMG! Ponies!

Basically you are right. BUT while a lot of people know how to exchange harddrives, a lot of people dont.

And since MS carter to those too, and would scare them off if they just sold a do it yourself - barebone - harddrive replacement its kinda logical that they have something built that anyone can install.

And since they dont manufacture those things themselfves, and since the HD makers also dont do that, they need someone else in the middle.

I do think that MS thought about those problems ... and it probably came down to the question : Who do i want to be able to install this. Everybody or (fantasy number) 50 % of my consumers.

Redwraithvienna

BrittanySalo

I really do have to give Sony props for making it so easy to swap out the hard drive in the PS3.

Kyoseki

If Microsoft buys the modified drives for $100, and they get sold for $150-$180, some of the profit goes to the retailer...not all in Microsoft's pocket.

However: all of that is irrelavant. The real issue is: why did microsoft decide to make the drives so damned proprietary in the first place? All they did was add a 4th profit making middle man on top of the 3 companies already making money on the 360 hard drive (Seagate/Toshiba, Microsoft and the retailer). And all the 4th guy does is strap some plastic on the drive?!!? Plastic that's only needed because Microsoft decided to turn a basically universal 2.5" hard drive into some proprietary nonsense?

Not that I expect businesses to act like a charity or anything...but why bring more steps into the loop to make money for somebody else? Even if Microsoft wanted to be able to make money on add-on drives, they could have just as easily ordered hard drives from Seagate/Toshiba with an extra chip or something on the controller to keep it proprietary...and that would have kept costs much lower (by eliminating the cost of plastic, the $20-$25 profit the plastic-putter-onner makes, and the trickle-down price increases that Microsoft and retailers charge down the line).

People complain a lot about Sony...but at least they didn't needlessly multiply the cost of a hard drive by 2.5x for no reason with the PS3. Added benefit: you can put any size hard drive you want in the PS3, while the 360 is limited to the few capacities that Microsoft is willing to sell.

(For the record, I don't own a PS3 or 360...I just like to complain when big businesses are illogical jerks).

EQC

seems you a forgetting a long chain of profits are obtained before you get the drive at that price, you are getting it at manufacturing value or quantity wholesale. This explanation seems to be way off from the reality, how can Apple get a tailored HD made for the ipod way cheaper than microsoft's regular laptop HDs? the are also buying millions of them. and they are Microsoft, they probably own every part of the production chain for the xbox360.

VakeroRokero

Rizzuh

ned flanders

BoinK

IMarcus