Merrill Lynch has released a new breakdown of next generation hardware component costs suggesting that Xbox 360 could be selling at half the price of PS3 in the latter half of 2006.
The report includes estimated breakdown of hardware costs by component and shipping predictions. Manufacturing costs has been the main factor. Here are some quotes from the report.
"…The PS3 will not only be significantly more costly than Xbox 360 at launch, but will continue to operate at a cost disadvantage for several years. … We think that the Xbox 360 could be selling at half the price of PS3 in the latter half of 2006."
"…Our analysis indicates that Microsoft has a significant advantage in terms of cost. Taking Sony's weakened financial condition and Microsoft's deep pockets into consideration, we conclude that Microsoft's Xbox 360 should emerge as the early winner in the next round of the game console wars."
"Competitive pricing [for Microsoft] could hurt margins for Microsoft in the near term, but we think that Microsoft has the potential to exit 2006 with an installed base of 10 million units, with all that implies for more profitable software sales for 2007."
You can read the full story at Next-Gen.biz
We posted this on our Xbox 360 sister site yesterday, but I am sure some of you would like to comment on this piece of news as well. Let's keep this discussion clean ok?
Merrill Lynch has released a new breakdown of next generation hardware component costs suggesting that Xbox 360 could be selling at half the price of PS3 in the latter half of 2006.
