Support NeoGAF

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Sony's PS4 helped AMD to avoid going bankrupt, according to the Red team's Gaming Client PC Business lead.

Things didn't go too well for AMD a decade ago, and analysts predicted that the Red Team would go bankrupt by 2020. Luckily, In 2015, AMD reported a revenue decline of 10% due to a shrinking PC market. Luckily, working with Sony on the PS4 helped AMD to avoid bankruptcy. At least, that's what AMD's Renato Fragale writes on his LinkedIn resume (as spotted by the ever eagle-eyed @Bogorad222 on X).

"Managed 15-person product development team for Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4) that has sold over 91Mu to date", AMD's Gaming Client PC Business Lead writes on LinkedIn. "Viewed as one of the most successful launches in AMD history helping AMD to avoid bankruptcy."

Sony's PS4 Helped AMD Avoid Going Bankrupt, AMD's Gaming Client PC Business Lead Says

Sony's PS4 helped AMD to avoid going bankrupt, according to the Red team's Gaming Client PC Business lead, Renato Fragale.

wccftech.com

 

[Fake]

PS4 indeed is a great machine for the time.

 

[Coloress_Kafka]

People seem to totally forget AMD’s position pre Ryzen, it’s amazing what Lisa Su did for the company.

 

[Mobilemofo]

Your welcome..A.M.D.

Now get sucking.

 

[Gaiff]

So the PS4 indirectly saved the PC market. At least, it forestalled its decline. We’d have had a $900 1080 Ti otherwise.

 

[winjer]

I'm surprised people didn't know this.
The financial reports of the time showed the custom chips division being very important to maintain a steady stream of revenue.

 

[T4keD0wN]

So the PS4 indirectly saved the PC market. At least, it forestalled its decline. We’d have had a $900 1080 Ti otherwise.

It doesnt seem theyve keept nvidia in line much, nvidia does their thing and amd only ever responds to that, not much the other way around, consumer CPU market would probably be completely fucked if amd went under.

 

[Duchess]

I'm surprised people didn't know this.

 

[winjer]

Only if you have been sleeping for a decade.

 

[Duchess]

Only if you have been sleeping for a decade.

I honestly didn't know this. I thought AMD had always been doing just fine. Very interesting to read.

 

[diffusionx]

I honestly didn't know this. I thought AMD had always been doing just fine. Very interesting to read.

Nope, the bulldozer cpus were total duds and Intel and Nvidia were both engaging in anticompetitive behavior against them. They were stuck with that architecture that nobody wanted until Ryzen.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

People seem to totally forget AMD’s position pre Ryzen, it’s amazing what Lisa Su did for the company.

And Jim Keller, who made the controversial decision to kill off both their mobile + desktop architectures and essentially bet the company on Zen.

It was pretty fucking dire there for a while. They were circling the drain. Constant rumors of this or that Chinese company buying them out, and anxiety about what would happen to the x86 competition since AMD’s licensing agreement with Intel was non-transferable.

 

[lh032]

Sony contribute alot, unlike some slimy CEO out there

 

[solidus12]

Xbox helped them as well

 

[mansoor1980]

saving console , PC and semi-conductor industry simultaneously...........................

 

[solidus12]

saving console , PC and semi-conductor industry simultaneously...........................

They should’ve put the original PS4 instead of the slim.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Thank you Sony for using the Jaguar netbook CPU architecture so that AMD could afford to develop something much better.

 

[winjer]

I honestly didn't know this. I thought AMD had always been doing just fine. Very interesting to read.

A decade ago, AMD was going trough a terrible time.
It got so bad, AMD had to sell their own headquarters and then lease then back, so they could have enough money to develop Ryzen.

 

[Esppiral]

Imagen a scenario with the only GPU provider being Nvidia, brrrrrrr

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

The PS4 cured cancer as well...

Spoiler

The cancer of Xbox xtardism

 

[LordOfChaos]

 

[solidus12]

The original Fat PS4 is amazing; too bad it’s also loud as fuck.

 

[Black_Stride]

So the PS4 indirectly saved the PC market. At least, it forestalled its decline. We’d have had a $900 1080 Ti otherwise.

The 5700XT was a 400 dollar card.......that was going to be AMDs swansong.
Anecdotally......the 2080Ti which was the same generation as the 5700XT was actually 999 dollars.......so ....................here are some meerkats eating yoghurt.

 

[GreatnessRD]

Only if you have been sleeping for a decade.

They are not one of us.

But the PC industry is definitely glad Ryzen and PS4 saved AMD. We would still be on 4 cores with Intel had they not survived.

 

[SolidQ]

We would still be on 4 cores

and 4060 for 1k$

 

[tkscz]

I honestly didn't know this. I thought AMD had always been doing just fine. Very interesting to read.

Oh no, AMD was in it deep for a while. They were doing great during the Family K10 era. Nintendo boosting them with the Wii still using an AMD GPU, taking the CPU gaming space from Intel with the Phenom II killing Intel in gaming performance, and thanks to it's much lower price, people actually bought their GPUs enough to give Nvidia a run for their money. Then AMD dropped the ball. The FX era with bulldozer CPUs pretty much killed them. Intel went with multi-threading and it boosted them back up to number 1 in production and gaming, while the FX CPUs tried to brute force everything with single thread performance and just couldn't keep up. Nvidia's CUDA technology put them so far ahead, AMD still has issues catching up today. And Jaguar mobile CPUs were just the worst. They were in big trouble during those times so I'm not surprised at all that the PS4's success kept them a float until Zen would save them. Just remember the gap between Bulldozer (and it's generational upgrades) and Zen was 6 years (2011 - 2017). Now a days AMD is coming back up in the general CPU market thanks to price to performance and has even been beating Intel in gaming performance and have taken the server environment from Intel with how well Epyc has been doing.

 

[Mahavastu]

I honestly didn't know this. I thought AMD had always been doing just fine. Very interesting to read.

For a long time they had some old school texan CEO who said "real man have fabs", so AMD had their own fabs and it costed them billions over time.
They had only one modern fab (Dresden) and it was so expensive that they needed to keep it busy to earn money.
But either their chips were shit, that they had to sell them too cheap and sold not enough to keep the fab busy. Or they had problems with manufacturing so they could not keep up with intel and reach high enough clockspeeds. Or they had some design flaw which made the cache only work with too low clock speed.
Or they had a great CPU like Athlon / Athlon64 and the one fab was just not big enough to produce enough to fullfill demand and make a good profit.
Somehow there was always some problem and being a stock holder was not nice during that time

Going TSMC was a godsend for the financials of the company.

 

[squarealex]

But the Xbox One have almost the same hardware, so not only PS4 isn't?

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

But the Xbox One have almost the same hardware, so not only PS4 isn't?

Now compare the order volumes, I guess. Plus Sony payed extra for more custom features, no doubts.

 

[squarealex]

Now compare the order volumes, I guess. Plus Sony payed extra for more custom features, no doubts.

Hmm... I see....

 

[SonGoku]

Surprising considering the low margins on console APUs sold

 

[SpearHea.:D]

Amd shares yay or nay

 

[Kumomeme]

 

[skit_data]

Interesting, didn't know it was that bad at the time. Pretty ironic that consoles saved the PC industry from essentially having no options regarding hardware manufacturers. Would been a pretty crazy timeline, glad it didn't go down that path.

 

[Hudo]

Good job on AMD's side to secure that deal. Really helped Sony out.

 

[SHA]

Xbox helped them as well

Destin Destin Destiny.

 

[SHA]

Xbox helped them as well

He's not bad, isn't he the nicest xbox guy? even nicer than Alanah.

 

[SHA]

Hmm... I see....

They're expecting the Kratos, the Joel second coming, the Guerrillas hidden secret just like me.

 

[SHA]

saving console , PC and semi-conductor industry simultaneously...........................

 

[ArtHands]

Playstation is still sustaining PC gaming right now with various releases like the upcoming God of War Ragnarok.

 

[MrRibeye]

The man has done it again. What a legend.

 

[Radical_3d]

The good and the evil. Also stop posting Jimbo asiciated with the PS4, please. It was released under Andrew House and likely started development under Kaz Hirai.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

So, I guess Sony is a beacon of light for the entire gaming industry?

 

[mansoor1980]

The good and the evil. Also stop posting Jimbo asiciated with the PS4, please. It was released under Andrew House and likely started development under Kaz Hirai.

 

[TGO]

The man has done it again. What a legend.

He had nothing to do with it, his contributions is the last 4 years.

 

[Unknown?]

He had nothing to do with it, his contributions is the last 4 years.

He contributed to the success PS had in Europe which is where PS4 really accelerated.

 

[IntentionalPun]

If you think about it nVidia being dicks and losing Sony / MS in the process is what saved AMD.

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

PlayStation is king!

 

[winjer]

On the opposite spectrum, when the original Xbox was being designed, AMD collaborated with MS, in the early stages of development. Only for MS to betray AMD and change the CPU from an Athlon to a Pentium.

A few years ago, MS apologized to AMD, for the slight of hand.

Xbox creator apologizes to AMD over last-minute switch to Intel CPUs 20 years ago

Microsoft launched the original Xbox on November 15, 2001. While we're still one month away from the 20th anniversary, Seamus Blackley is using the occasion to apologize...

www.techspot.com

 

[plip.plop]

This feels like foreshadowing. I think the next Xbox will be Nvidia-powered.