AMD is reportedly already lined up to make the CPU in the Sony PlayStation 6, after beating Intel to the contract, according to the latest reports. Thanks to its ability to integrate its CPU cores and Radeon GPU cores into the same silicon, AMD has long been a firm favorite among console makers, with its chips used in the PS4, PS5, and PS5 Pro, as well as the Xbox Series X, and Xbox One, among others.
However, Intel was apparently working hard to win the contract to make the chip in the Sony PS5’s so-far-unannounced successor, which is expected to be called the PS6. AMD makes the best gaming CPU on the PC right now, in the form of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and while the company’s GPU tech is lagging behind that of Nvidia at the moment when it comes to ray tracing, AMD has a longer pedigree than Intel when it comes to making fully-fledged gaming GPUs.
According to a report from Reuters, Intel was competing with several chip designers for the PlayStation 6 contract, including AMD and Broadcom, with the winner going on to design the final chip, which would be built by TSMC. The site says it has spoken to three sources with knowledge of the events, two of whom said the contract had a value of billions of dollars in revenue.
Two sources also informed the site that the main blocker for Intel was a disagreement over the profit Intel would make on each chip bought by Sony to use in the console. Meanwhile, a competitive bidding process eliminated other chip manufacturers, such as Broadcom, to the point where only AMD and Intel were left.
According to Reuters, Intel and Sony spent several months discussing the potential for the contract back in 2022, with meetings not only involving “dozens of engineers,” but also the CEOs of both companies.
Although Intel is well behind AMD and Nvidia when it comes to gaming GPU market share, the company has made huge strides in the abilities of its GPUs in the last few years.
While we experienced a few compatibility issues in our Intel Arc A770 review, the gaming performance was surprisingly solid when the card worked, and Intel has since been beavering away on regular driver updates to improve compatibility. The company also recently claimed it now has the “fastest built-in GPU” in a thin-and-light laptop chip, with the launch of its new Intel Lunar Lake SoCs (system-on-chip).
It’s not known whether the chip in the PS6 is just a CPU, or as SoC combining the CPU and GPU in one chip, but it’s highly likely that AMD will be building Sony a chip that combines one of its CPUs and GPUs in one chip.
Intel is expected to release its new lineup of Core Ultra 200 gaming CPUs for the desktop in October 2024, and you can check out our Intel Arrow Lake guide to find out everything we know about the new chips so far.