Microsoft’s Project Scorpio will be the center piece of the company’s E3 2017 press conference with a release date, price, design reveal and hopefully a final name. Though the price has yet to be confirmed, Geoff Keighley says it will be $499.

The noted host and man behind The Game Awards said on Twitter that, “I can now say with confidence Project Scorpio is $499. Unless something changes today, that is what will be announced.”

Analyst firm IHS further predicted that the system will retail for $499/€499/£429. “The expected price differential between Project Scorpio and Xbox One S is high enough to reduce the impact of the new platform on the broader console audience.

“Project Scorpio is not the device to re-ignite Xbox One sales in continental Europe and to gain market share from Sony in key sales territories outside of USA and UK.”

Again, this isn’t official confirmation from Microsoft so stay tuned for the company’s press conference at 2 PM PST to learn more.

The recent uncoupling of motion camera Kinect from the Xbox One, which will retail for $399 on June 9th onwards, has seen a mish-mash of opinions. Some are happy about the price drop, early adopters are miffed for having spent $100 extra and some are wondering what this means about the Kinect’s future.

IHS Director and Head of Games Piers Harding-Rolls weighed in on the same, stating that, “IHS believes that this is confirmation that Kinect is not a major decision making factor in buying a Xbox One – at this stage games and price are the key factors involved.

“In effect, Microsoft has reverted to its Xbox 360 Kinect strategy and with a likely drop in interest from third-parties, Kinect for Xbox One has suddenly shifted from central to the Xbox vision to the periphery.

“However, later in the cycle when adoption is more mass market aligned and entertainment functionality is more heavily built out, Microsoft will be hoping that the value of Kinect will be more easily demonstrated and in demand.”

Which isn’t a bad strategy but for that, we’d need some compelling games. What say, Microsoft?

(Source)

In a press release sent to GamingBolt by IHS, a firm that specializes in video games analysis, new details about the PlayStation 4’s APU and memory have been revealed. In the report, the core processor and the GDDR5 memory alone costs $188 which is almost the half of the console’s retail price. The processor approximately costs $100.

Furthermore, the PlayStation 4’s processor occupies a massive 350 square millimeters which is three times larger than any other chip manufactured.

“Sony clearly has made the decision to focus on balancing the brains and economics of the console, with the processor and memory dominating both the design and the BOM. This processor is a monster, with the surface area of the chip amounting to about 350 square millimeters. That is three times larger than any other chip manufactured using equivalent-process technology that has been examined by the IHS Teardown Analysis service. Despite the remarkable silicon acreage of this device, it comes at a price point attractive to mainstream consumers while delivering a very high level of performance. Future versions, manufactured with even more advanced semiconductor processing technology, will further enhance both cost and performance,” reveals Jordan Selburn, senior principal analyst for consumer platforms at IHS.

Furthermore, the report also talks about how the GDDR5 RAM is faster than DDR3 found in the Xbox and how it can improve graphics performance.

“GDRAM DDR5 memory has much higher bandwidth than the DDR3 used in the Xbox One. It also works better with parallel computing and is designed specifically to enhance graphics performance,” said Mike Howard, senior principal analyst, DRAM & memory, for IHS. “Because of its cutting-edge status, GDRAM GDDR5 is more expensive than DDR3, which is used in high volume in products including PCs and older game consoles,” said Mike Howard, senior principal analyst, DRAM & memory, for IHS.

You check out our PlayStation 4 review here and learn more about its various components here.

IHS analyst Andrew Rassweiler stated that, “This [350 square millimeter chip] is just gigantic. It’s almost three times as big as the next biggest chip we’ve seen.”

The PS3 roughly cost $805 to build according to IHS and retailed for $599. The PS4 on the other hand will retail for $399, making for an $18 price difference in production. While IHS estimates that Sony’s profits will come from games, there’s no denying that the company is in a far better position in concerns to production costs with the PS4.

The PS4 is set to launch on November 29th in Europe and is currently available in North America. If you’re curious about other components residing in the PS4, head here.

His study forecast that by 2017, digitally distributed games and gaming services will represent a 34 percent share of total games spend across the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The report also revealed that back in 2008, it was a mere 8 percent across the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Piers believes that publisher ambition to have their games digitally available is one of the reasons behind the increase. “Those titles that have already experimented with digital ‘day and date’ releases alongside boxed versions have enjoyed a small but growing digital share of total sales volume, but IHS predicts that by 2017 new releases could be enjoying up to 18% digital sales depending on geography,” he said in a press release sent to GamingBolt.

Piers also claims that the pricing model, discover-ability and accessibility of digital content will push digital sales. It’s no secret that both Sony and Microsoft are going digital in a big way with Gaikai and Azure cloud technology respectively. Valve has already seen great success with their digital distribution platform Steam, when they reached at all time high of 65 million users recently.

He further believes that “the shift to digital consumption coupled with lower up-front investment in console hardware design and custom components is expected to lay the foundation for stronger profitability for the platform holders across the next generation when compared to the PS3/Xbox 360 consoles.”

Interesting take. We will see how it pans out in the coming years.