[tinybear1]

It is definitely being sold at a loss, the Cyclone V SOC being used costs more than the entire development board.[0] I wonder if Intel will ever take notice due to MiSTer's growing popularity and quit subsidizing the board.

[0] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/intel/5CSEBA6U23I...

Edit: it was erroneous of me to state the board was being sold at a loss, rather I meant that the board was being definitely being subsidized by companies such as Intel and their partners such as Panasonic. My mistake. I also wasn't meaning to convey that the consumer Digikey pricing was the same as the large volume manufacturers such as Terasic. Rather I meant to demonstrate and agree with the OP on the astounding situation that MiSTer currently exists in, owning to the lack of economic viability for someone to produce a low volume commercial FPGA emulation machine for a niche audience without any subsidization.

[tverbeure]

There is absolutely no way they’re sold at a loss. Your DigiKey price of $245 proves this, because a factor of 10 is a good starting point as a ratio between volume and one-off DigiKey pricing of any type of complex silicon.

A better way to approach this is as follows: what’s the die size of an FPGA like this? What’s the production cost of the die? Then check the historic gross margin percentage of FPGA companies. Xilinx is around 68%, and that includes high-end products which carry the highest markups, unlike this cookie cutter thing.

That should give you a good ballpark number.

DigiKey charges what they do because nobody else is willing to sell these things in low volume, and they have very high inventory costs.

[andrewcchen]

Digikey pricing is not indicative of actual volume pricing, especially for FPGAs where they are often many times overpriced when buying from distributors. I doubt the board is sold at an loss, probably sold at a small profit, not that's it's really significant for a low volume dev board.