According to a teardown of the Xbox One by research firm IHS; it has emerged that the Xbox One costs $471 to produce – $90 more than the PlayStation 4 and only $18 short of the $499 retail price suggesting little, if any, profit from sales of the console itself.
In the teardown, seen by AllThingsD, IHS says a large contributing factor to the difference in the price is the Kinect sensor which comes in with a price tag of $75. While the PS4 does have a camera; it isn't included with the console and therefore wasn't counted in the teardown of that system.
Andrew Rassweiler, the IHS analyst who led the teardown team in Los Angeles, noted that the microprocessor from chipmaker AMD is the single most expensive part of the system costing an estimated $110 – $10 more than the equivalent AMD chip found in the PS4.
As with the PS4 chip this one is a combination of a CPU and a GPU.
“They’re both very powerful chips,” Rassweiler commented. Both the PS4 and Xbox One chip are built on the same 28-nanometer design technology. and they essentially provide all of the computing power of the console.
“You might call them a gaming console on a chip,” he added.
$332 is spent on the console's components itself excluding the Kinect sensor and controller, Rassweiler estimated. This means that the other items in the box add about $139 to the cost. The controller costs about $15, $3 less than the DualShock 4. The external power supply costs about $25, and other box contents, including the headset, cost about $10.
Due to R&D and other costs, it's expected that Microsoft will lose $1 billion this year on Xbox One according to analysts. As with Sony, Microsoft will have to rely on sales of games and other services if they're to make a profit on their console.
You can check out the breakdown of the PS4 and the cost of building that console here.
