I often lament the days when we had more GPU manufacturers on the board, providing more suppliers and helping keep prices down. The days of Voodoo and Savage are long behind us. And not too soon after they were taken off the board were nVidia and ATI charged with colluding in an effort to arrange illegal price-setting on the market (though never found guilty; but where there’s smoke there’s usually fire). Again, fewer suppliers on the market does not yield positive outcomes for consumers. It is one of the reasons I push back on console warriors who insist they want to see either Xbox or PlayStation die. We should always be asking for more competitors to enter and remain in the space, not less.
It’s an interesting convergence of thought…GPUs and console platform owners…now that we are hearing just how bad AMD market share has gotten in the DIY / AIB GPU space. PCGamesN reported yesterday that that market share might be a low as 6% for AMD now. This despite the supposed bonga launch of the RX 9070 XT, which I’d always felt was an overrated product with overly-vaunted assumptions on uptake and sales.
I say interesting convergence because it casts a fascinating light on the announcement this summer of the tighter partnership between AMD and XBox.
A partnership that is at least a component of the dynamic that is bringing us the ASUS ROG XBox Ally & Ally X. As a pre-amble, there are some thoughts I disagree on with some of the more popular takes out there making the rounds. I do not think that this is the same old thing as the typical CPU down-select for the nextgen console that it has always been. Where, if they so desire, Intel, nVidia, and AMD make unsolicited pitches for XBox to allow their silicon to power the XBox Next (I say unsolicited because I don’t think Xbox asks Intel or nVidia for their bids anymore, just AMD). And then, depending on the capabilities offered, pricing, volume, and confidence in the vendor, Xbox makes a choice on one.
I also do not agree with the Moore’s Law is Dead outlook that this is an arrangement to just bring stock AMD APU SKUs to XBox in order to get XBox cheaper prices. I am believing in the dream that this is a more tightly integrated go-to-market strategy for XBox that will yield custom silicon, much in the same vein as the A-Series processors that now power Apple’s entire lineup. I expect to see custom X1, X2, X3…X-n+1 processors that power the next XBox. Yay verily, that designation may really mean an XBox chipset that consists of an AMD APU along with a custom Microsoft NPU, or at least Microsoft AI/ML code (Co-Pilot) that runs a highly tailored variant Co-Pilot productization layer under the hood; possibly running local inferences from an on-console NPU, with reach-back to nearby edge servers running a “Gaming RAG”.
And I do believe that money exchanged hands in this new partnership, in an amount exceeding what Microsoft would have formerly been paying AMD for R&D for the nextgen silicon. That this deal constitutes essentially integrating chip design in-house by contracting AMD to do part of the lift.
A move that is basically Microsoft establishing what will act like a joint-venture between the two, versus buying a PA Semi and entirely in-housing chip design (and then carrying all of its associated overhead).
The point of all this is to ask the question, does this outlook seem more feasible given AMD’s continual backslide in GPU market-share for the DIY and integrator market? Was the conversation an extension of the “We’ll never out-console Sony or Nintendo?” Phil putting his arms around Dr Su’s shoulders and saying “And just like us, you will never out-GPU nVidia.” I’ve talked before about how this leads to the “line of products” that Sarah Bond talked about that would be XBox’ in multiple form factors, and in a productization way that makes WAY more sense than the current slapping of a label and an XBox button on products that they are doing today. And can render more elegant approaches to backwards compatibility than streaming through the Cloud of only Play Anywhere titles.
As a Silicon Nomad who loves gadgetry…a veteran of TabletPC, Windows Phone, Zune, Microsoft Band, Surface, Surface Duo, and Sidewinder peripherals…and who still believes that one day we will get a true Courier product….I’m going to hold on to this notion and hope it bears fruit. But who also acknowledges that this partnership with XBox may have been borne out of an act of desperation by AMD who may be realizing there is no way to eke out a profitable market position and market-share to warrant its consumer GPU business.
Rounding Off Infinity 