Soitec Increases Wafer Production for PS3

[Evi]

"French wafer manufacturer Soitec have announced that they will be expanding their facilities in preparation for increased production of the 300mm silicon-on-insulator wafers in the near future.
The company plans to quadruple its output of 300mm wafers which will be used by Sony at their new manufacturing plant in Japan to build Cell microprocessors for the PS3, as well as for other CPUs built by IBM and AMD."

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

I guess this just means more production for the PS3...

Which simply means more production cost for the PS3 which means we will have to hand over more from our income to own one?

^ No... quite opposite I guess becuz AMD and Intel are also in.
Dev costs are hence more or less \'carried\' by 3 \'clients\' thus these costs get spread out over the 3 of them and Soitec itself.

Doesnt make a difference.The cost may be split.But total cost consists of the cost each one has to produce and this will show on the price.Unless if the fact that it is split means that the cost will be insignifigant for each one of them so they wont add it in the price to cover it

How does that make the production cost go up? I thought it would make it go down. S^PCv

Probably,Is it cheaper to produce than standard silicon technology?I thought it would be more expensive since its a new scheme used in powerful chips.Probably I am wrong

Whatever price it was going to start out, wont go any higher. Supply goes up, production costs go down.

oh yeah you are right.Thought it was about introducing new hardware schemes.Didnt notice it was about increasing production of previous implemented scheme

Any of the companies would be stupid to increase the already standard launch price. Unless they were offering something extra or so much better than everything else then i could see prices go over 300 but i highly doubt anything will surpass 300 (400 at most).

Its just a bad move.

PS2\'s launch in 1999 in Japan though costed around $600.

I think PS3 will be at least 400.

Originally posted by unfocused
I think PS3 will be at least 400.

i think youre wrong

[Paul2]

its too early to tell.  But I can hears all the fans cheering when they hear that PS3 will cost $299 when its hit the store and I will be one of those who wants one right away if that\'s the case and will try to get one as soon as possible.

$600 is a logical price when its released in Japan as a first region launch.It was the same case with PSX and PS2.When its released in other regions I estimate it will cost around $300 just like before

[Paul2]

^^^

I somewhat agree that PS3 may cost as much as $600 or for the fact that it can play Blu Ray too.

and not to mention its use a very powerful Cell processor with graphic that is pretty expensive and for it to cost $300 will make other stand alone blu ray players a run for the money...

I am not sure how Sony is going to work that out though.

When DVD players first hit America in 1997, they were only interlaced dvd player that cost as much as $1,000 and more from major brands company.  Some only have S-Video, no component video connection....
well, that was back then.

Now one can get a good same built quality dvd player that\'s support progressive scan and other features for around $200.  Or one can get a decent one under $100.

I can see PS3 will have HDMi, Blu Ray, HDD, network adapter, 4 controller ports, but the biggest concern i gets is the cost...