Way
back in 2007, surrounded by controversy and material shortages, the
Playstation 3 launched, well, it half launched in some places, didn't
launch at all in others, and sold for stupid $2000 price tags on Ebay.
After a rocky period and shortages over half the globe, things
straightened out and the Playstation 3 sold for around $630/£425, the
most expensive home console to be released. The PS3 pretty much blew the
Playstation 2 totally out of the water, hosting features and technology
that it's little brother couldn't even comprehend when it was released
back in 2000. The main reason for Playstation 3's high price tag was the
2x slot-loading Blu-Ray DvD Disc drive, which at the time, put the
production cost of the Playstation 3 way up to $800. Some time has
passed since then but the cost of a similar Blu-Ray drive can still set
you back $400, which is a considerable amount of money to any gamer. One
thing that's safe to assume, Sony won't go backwards with the
Playstation 4 so we can expect either another Blu-Ray drive, or some
improvement on the current one, automatically sky-rocketing the
predicted Playstation 4 price to over $500, although there are a number
of Blu-Ray drives that you can pick up for next to nothing that offer
similar technical capabilities, only time will tell.Improving the PS4
One of the many complaints from industry experts is the Playstation 3 RAM limits, featuring only 256MB of XDR DRAM as the consoles main memory unit and another 254MB of GDDR3 RAM for the Nvidia RSX, it is undoubtedly one of the main features of the PS3 that's been holding it back. So what can they do with the Playstation 4 to improve on this? The XDR ram itself, although at 256MB sounds to be selling you short, is actually considered to be up to 12x faster than traditional PC RAM, although when compared to current PC technology, this is no longer a solid fact. The RAM is nothing new, the same type of technology was used in the N64, although nowhere near as powerful as current options but 256MB of it can set you back $120/£80, so at current generation prices it can still cost a bit.
Then we move on to the graphical part of the Playstation 3, the Nvidia RSX (the unit that powers the PS3's graphic capabilities), is now 4 years old and there's plenty of other models available on the market although the RSX is still a pretty sweet graphical option as it boasts 300+ trillion transistors, the ram clocks at 700mhz, and can produce 60 million dots per second, more than enough to power any gaming console but nobody wants today's technology in tomorrows console, right? The RSX is the equivalent to the 8800GT used in many computers over recent years but even the 8800GT is obsolete with the other cards available in todays market, the current price of an 8800GT is roughly $280/£180 and considering this card features technology 4 years out of date, you can expect a cost of at least $300/£200 for the Playstation 4's graphical unit.
