- Reports claim that AMD won the contract for Sony's next PS6 chipset in 2022.
- Backwards compatibility was a crucial factor in AMD being chosen for the PS6 chipset.
- Sony's profit margin dispute with Intel was a significant reason for retaining AMD as the chipmaker as well.
Before the talks of a mid-gen refresh of PlayStation 5 even began, PS6 was rumored to be nearing its development. A report now suggests that the PS6 will also have an AMD chip just like the PS5 Pro with backwards compatibility.
Reports from Reuters suggest that Sony was negotiating with both Intel and AMD, but AMD won the contract in 2022. It further claims that it was a bidding process for which chip manufacturers would get a deal. The bidding process narrowed down to Intel and AMD as the final contenders.
However, one of the major reasons for the deal to break was profit sharing. According to the report, the profit margin for each processor became a critical breaking point as both parties couldn’t end up on mutual understanding.
PlayStation 6 Backwards Compatibility
Furthermore, Reuters also claims that backwards compatibility was another major breaking point for Sony and Intel. The report says, “Ensuring backward compatibility with prior versions of the PlayStation would have been costly and taken engineering resources.”
As PlayStation has been using AMD chips for the last couple of generations now, it is evident that they do not want to shift its chipset formula. Sony has certainly asked AMD to design and fabricate the PlayStation 6’s chip. Given that Sony wants the games to be run on all devices, backwards compatibility is critical.
However, it is still unknown if the report means the PS6 chipset will be backwards compatible with PS4 or PS5 games.
While there is no official statement from AMD or Sony, a spokesperson from Intel said to Reuters: “We strongly disagree with this characterization but are not going to comment about any current or potential customer conversations. We have a very healthy customer pipeline across both our product and foundry business, and we are squarely focused on innovating to meet their needs.”
For now, we know based on Activision Microsoft court filings, Sony is not anticipated to launch its next-generation gaming console before 2028. What are your thoughts on PS6 having an AMD chip again with backwards compatibility now the deal renewed with Sony? Tell us in the comments below.
