Intel tried but failed to get Sony to use its chips instead of AMD’s for its upcoming PlayStation 6,
Reuters is reporting today citing three sources familiar with the negotiations. AMD, which manufactures the custom chips for Sony’s PlayStation 5, the
upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro, and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X|S consoles, reportedly won the bidding process against Intel two years ago.
“A dispute over how much profit Intel stood to take from each chip sold to the Japanese electronics giant blocked Intel from settling on the price with Sony, according to two of the sources. Instead, rival AMD landed the contract through a competitive bidding process that eliminated others such as Broadcom, until only Intel and AMD remained,” the report reads.
It’s no secret that Intel is facing serious financial problems, with the company reportedly
considering a separation of its chip design and foundry businesses to survive. A deal with Sony for the PlayStation 6 could have brought Intel a steady flow of income – $30 billion throughout the contract according to Intel’s internal projections – but AMD has been supplying chips to both Sony and Microsoft since the beginning of the PS4 and Xbox One generation in 2013. As a result, the company now has solid experience in creating custom chips for console makers.
According to the report, another thing that may have pushed Sony to stick with AMD for the PlayStation 6 is backwards compatibility. Even though Intel chips use the same x86 architecture as AMD chips, Intel would have needed to do some extra work to make its potential PS6 chips work great with PlayStation games from previous generations designed to run on custom AMD chips.
“Moving from AMD, which made the PlayStation 5 chip, to Intel would have risked backwards compatibility, which was a subject of discussion between Intel and Sony engineers and executives”, sources told Reuters. “Ensuring backward compatibility with prior versions of the PlayStation would have been costly and taken engineering resources.”
If Sony’s PlayStation 6 will reportedly use AMD chips, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft ends up doing the same with its next-gen Xbox console. According to the
words of Xbox President Sarah Bond, the next Xbox console should deliver the “biggest technological leap ever in a generation.”
www.thurrott.com
