Apparently, in 2022, there was a battle to decide whether Intel or AMD would supply the hardware to power the future PlayStation 6. Unfortunately for Intel, AMD won the contract. And it has to be said that the company has been in the business for a long time now, going all the way back to the PS4!
The PlayStation 6: still with AMD!
As far as Sony’s consoles are concerned, broadly speaking, there are invitations to tender to find out who will produce the CPU/GPU part of the console. As with previous generations, this call for tenders leads to a made-to-order design, because the PlayStation has very specific needs in terms of functionality, power, consumption, etc., etc…
The reason why the deal between Sony and Intel didn’t go through was obviously because of a dispute over the sale price of the Blues’ chip. From what emerges, at least from the way things are said in the Reuters article, Sony is said to have offered too low a price, which would not have generated enough profit for Intel.
The article also highlights a concern about backward compatibility. Indeed, switching from AMD to Intel would have posed an additional challenge in terms of getting older games compatible on this new generation of console… Not to mention that Intel is still very new to the graphics card sector, unlike AMD, which already has a great deal of experience.
In short, it’s a blow to Intel, which has been too stingy. Including Sony in its customer portfolio would have restored some much-needed prestige to the company. Note that the negotiations took place during the year 2022!