AMD makes more profit than Sony on the PS4

Sony makes $18, AMD makes close to $100
By Carly Page Nov 20 2013

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS FIRM Sony reportedly is making an $18 profit on its Playstation 4 (PS4), while AMD is likely making around $100 per console sold. Research firm IHS iSupply claims to have worked out how much the PS4 costs Sony to build, revealing the company's gross margin. ​

According to the researchers, the PS4 bill of materials costs $372, and with manufacturing costs added the total cost comes to $381. If this is correct, it means that Sony is making a profit of $18 on every PS4 console it sells, based on the $399 retail price. This is an improvement over the PS3, which made the company no profit whatsoever.

Andrew Rasweller, senior director of cost benchmarking services at IHS said, "Sony is on a greatly shortened path to the hardware break-even point, or even profitability, with its cost-conscious Playstation 4 design.

"The company is pulling off this feat, despite offering a brand-new design that once again includes avant-garde components that yield superfast performance. The Playstation 4 keeps a lid on costs by focusing all the additional expense on the processor and memory - and reducing outlays for the optical drive, the hard disk drive (HDD) and other subsystems."

The PS4's custom built AMD processor, which combines an eight-core Jaguar architecture CPU with a 1.84TFLOPS Radeon GPU, is apparently the console's most expensive component, costing around $100 all in. This is followed by the PS4's 8GB of GDR55 RAM, which apparently costs Sony $88.

This sees AMD making quite a healthy profit per console. AMD is also probably making a similar amount on the Microsoft Xbox One console, so it's likely that AMD will be able to report some decent financial figures early next year.

Read more here --> theinquirer.net