Xbox 360 has a few weeks left to its official launch and this will give Microsoft a few months headstart on Sony and PlayStation 3. According to the analyst firm Merrilll Lynch this isn’t the only weapon Microsoft will have to fight for the consumers money and liking during the second half of 2006. Merrill Lynch has namely analysed the component costs for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the result shows that Xbox 360 could be sold at half the price of PlayStation 3 during the second half of 2006.
PlayStation 3 will not only be affected by a higher entry price but also uses expensive components, something that will benefit Microsoft and X360 for several years. The big problem seems to be the Cell-processor and PS3’s Blu-ray units which are considerably more expensive than X360’s equivalents. They’ve published a list covering the separate component costs in an article at Next Generation where you can see where the extra money is needed.
