I was reading many years ago that microsoft were doing a lot of research and development for their next console , looking into cpu design as well as many other functions that a console uses .
I have read many times that having a 16 core cpu is impossible , what makes a company with billions of dollars resources less intelligent than the man on the street ?
even if they did intend to use a 16 core processor who says it will cost $300 ? it could be low powered and the way it processes data is the job of somebody who has knowledge in computer science .
Anyway , from a accounting point of view , if you have a contract with a company for 30 million processors over a period of lets say 7 years , even if the processors cost $200 each today with the said company have a 15% profit margin included in that price and that is the cost of production ,
every year that product will deprecate in production cost and after a few years will become old tech .
So a deal to supply 30 million processors at least over a period of time could be put into a percentage ratio per console , lets say 25% as a example and it deprecates at 1% a year or what ever the deal details ....
I done a calculation and i guess the processor will cost microsoft roughly $100 per processors per console over its life cycle , as a lot of research and development has already been done by microsoft over the last 5 years , microsoft is not just some stupid company with no idea or money ,
and just to add , when you look on the inter net and see a $300 16 core cpu that price also includes packaging , production , transport , research and development cost , advertisement , the retailers profit margin , plus tax ......
Just a thought , could you imagine a game played on a 400sq island with 30 plus players where you are able to talk with the AI using kinect which have a basic data base of responses , can you imagine leaving your console while its still running and players are still playing , while you fly over to another island =console with another 400sq island , just because they haven't done things like this yet doesn't mean it can not be done , you don't need a powerful GPU for consoles as they work on 1080p tv's ..
I think PC's are cool and can be very much more powerful than consoles , but are develops programming for the PC ? what i mean by that is optimization of the standard set of tech in a console can be much more effective than the different tech you find in a PC .....