Not necessarily -- the Xbox include a Kinect in the box which will increase its price/lower its profit margin. The PS4 has a camera but nothing as sophisticated/expensive as the Kinect.

Total Tangent: I just saw Jaron Lanier speak in SF last night and he was very proud of the work he did on the Kinect.

I find that particularly interesting in light of his sort of decrying the digital-social culture we've developed in the last decade. Strange guy with a lot of really different opinions; was a lot of fun.

The Xbox including the new Kinect definitely lowers margins, but if Kinect becomes an integral part of the gaming experience it will be a sound bet.

> The Xbox including the new Kinect definitely lowers margins, but if Kinect becomes an integral part of the gaming experience it will be a sound bet.

Indeed. Bundling it is the best way to ensure the Kinect is used in every title.

I don't think the goal is to make sure the Kinect is used in every title. Rather, it allows any title to use it.

Currently, the Kinect is a peripheral, which means that developers can't assume that it's there. If they want to use it, they have two options: be a full-on Kinect game that doesn't make sense without the device, or have controller-only options for everything. That's a lot of pain. But if they can assume that the Kinect is always there, there's no tradeoff.

Exactly, the developer experience is very important, and hardware is only an issue if you're really pushing the limits. Differences in SDK made a huge difference in popularity between the PS3 and the 360. Since the 360 handled background music, matchmaking, and voice chat natively, devs had a huge head start over competitors on the PS3. Helping out the devs had a direct effect on the players' experience, which led to the 360's dominance in multiplayer games.

Tangent: In addition to that, I think this generation might be defined by how well each console opens up to smaller/indie developers.

Modern day indie developers are making products which we would have called AAA games in 1998 and many of them are selling extremely well (just see Kickstarter). I think they have a HUGE role to play this generation, and holding them hostage in the "app" sandbox will be a massive mistake.

If either Microsoft or Sony opened up their SDK to indie developers, and created some kind of arrangement where these developers could sell digitally for a fee, I think they will effectively "win" this round. And I do not mean "apps." I mean full power of the console level stuff.

Yeah.. but it does look like MS is backpedaling in support of indie devs for the XBox One.

OTOH, it seems developing for the One will be easy. At least, as easy as developing for Windows.

Although I personally have little love for Visual Studio, most Windows developers would never leave it.

Were it programmable in Lisp, I suppose developers would use it to read e-mail and chat on IRC ;-)

I believe they used to make the previous console at a loss, because they generate most of their profits through the sales of games and accessories. I believe.

Yes, the PS3 initially launched at a loss(mainly because of the Blu Ray player from what I remember). Towards the end of its lifetime it wasn't losing them money.

The extra CUs in the PS4 are offset by the ESRAM in the One; I would expect the die size is similar. Sony has more expensive RAM, though.

Is the eSRAM really that expensive in $ terms? Yield issues?

I understood that SRAM was only really 'expensive' in that it chews up masses of die space (which isn't a bad bet going forward because there'll inevitably be a new version at some point with a smaller process)

Yes, my assumption is cost = die size.

I was talking about cost, not performance.

And the rest of the ecosystem. I do hope the new incarnation of Live allows for PC/One simultaneous play.