Sadly, AMD doesn't get to dictate their requirements for their customers. Their clients much like Microsoft or Sony both have an "open procurement/bidding process" where they will extensively evaluate all proposals or possibilities. If they absolutely felt like that they needed more robust HW RT implementation or AI upscaling then it would be reflected into their requirements but the fact that AMD's competitor wasn't picked at all must've meant that they're either clearly off the mark or at least were not the closest to meeting their true requirements whether or not their proponents refuse to admit this truth in plain sight ...
Was AMD a bad choice for the consoles? *spawn
- Thread starter DegustatoR
- Start date
Subtlesnake
Regular
The PS5 is probably around 5X faster than the PS4 (7850 vs 5700 XT), which seems to be roughly in line with the difference between the PS3 and PS4. So I don't think the performance jump is conservative by historical standards. You also have to consider the vast jump in CPU performance and the addition of the SSD.
And it's not as if the PS5 is doing terribly either. It's slightly behind where the PS4 was at the stage in its lifecycle, and is basically just undergoing a momentary slump.
That's not on AMD though. The console companies go to the vendors and ask for options, and pick the best one for their budget. About the only thing AMD could have done differently is practically give away the hardware, but that'd only potentially lose them licensing as the fabrication is handled by the console companies. I'm not even sure if MX or Sony licensed a more powerful part, that AMD would get more money. Even then, let's say Sony were offered something bigger and better, the cost of the console would still be higher to support faster RAM and more cooling, and already it's price prohibitive. So for all we know AMD offered them something and it was Sony who turned it down saying what they chose is the ideal size silicon and tech for their choice of fab and unit BOM.
I think the main issue here is you feeling that the console sales are tied to the performance. Why are you not considering the price here, and how vastly more expensive the consoles are at this point in their lifecycle than previous consoles? Isn't that enough alone to explain why sales aren't as strong as previous generations where the consoles may have been half the price they are now?
For AMD's console contracts, all they can do is offer options to the console companies to choose. The only levy one can fairly make against that is a broad "AMD isn't very good and needs to get better" to be able to offer more powerful hardware for the same price, which doesn't seem a particularly fair argument unless one can clearly point to better price/performance options elsewhere. If one can't say (with evidence), "both nVidia and Intel were offering the console companies twice the performance for the same money," then we can't prove that AMD could and should be providing better console hardware.
DegustatoR
Legend
Is it? The whole idea behind their "semi"-custom business is that they provide pre-designed building blocks to chose from for their customers. Do you think that Sony and MS would say "no" to a GPU with DLSS-like capabilities or RT performance on par with what Nvidia offers? PS5's GPU is already a weird "RDNA 1.5" design suggesting that at least Sony wasn't too happy with what was available back at PS5 design phase on the AMD "semi"-custom side.
It is of course an open question on what such improvement would mean for the costs in both designing them and then production.
What other part could AMD offer that they withheld? AMD didn't have a DLSS-like technology to provide. At which point your argument is "AMD isn't good enough" for not being able to offer that, which isn't a constructive position.
You need to present a concrete alternative that shows AMD did the console companies a dirty. The vague hypothetical and numerous maybes presented here don't make any sort of convincing argument against the clearer evidence to the contrary - the console companies asked for what AMD could provide, AMD presented options, and the console companies picked what they wanted to fit their budget.
Console vendors care about two things - costs and games library. The elephant in the room is that these requirements have nothing to do with how good competing solutions are. They are now willingly locked into x86 due to backward compatibility. Microsoft has a chance to start all over again given their weak position right now, but I am pretty sure their gaming executives are just as shortsighted as they ever were, so they will likely make the same mistakes all over again by locking themselves into a single instruction set and vendor. Nintendo had a perfect chance for a comeback due to the upscalers and RT, even with the mobile up to 35-watt form factor, yet they are just as shortsighted as all the others and opted for outdated hardware. No wonder the console market is struggling.
I don’t see how we can blame AMD for poor console sales. Console manufacturers determine cost, price and feature targets. Presumably AMD offered the best combination of those things.
I agree that the console hardware scene has become quite boring but that’s not AMD’s fault. I would love to see something out of left field with a different CPU and/or GPU arch next round but there aren’t too many IP providers to choose from.
I agree that the console hardware scene has become quite boring but that’s not AMD’s fault. I would love to see something out of left field with a different CPU and/or GPU arch next round but there aren’t too many IP providers to choose from.
DavidGraham
Veteran
I think the consensus among console makers has been to follow a certain strict formula: very cheap hardware + services + software = profitable business. This pretty much explains the actions of all 3 console makers.
Exactly, even though Nintendo follows the same formula as Sony and Microsoft, they differentiated themselves by having their console be portable, and by having unique software that takes advantage of that (local multiplayer/split screen ..etc). Thus Nintendo has virtually no competition. That's not the case with Sony and Microsoft, they are mostly identical boxes, the winner will be the one with the biggest mindshare, and as it gets bigger it attracts more players to it from the other side by virtue of people wanting to stay in the same gaming circle as their friends, which forces the competition to become smaller and smaller. Xbox needs a differentiating factor, otherwise their formula won't be enough to save their business (which is obvious when you look at Xbox Series S).
They are not off the mark as evidenced by the PS5 Pro doubling down on HW RT and AI Upscaling, and AMD was picked solely based on price, their contract is cheap and provides a CPU on top, it's not due to any other philosophy other than the "formula"
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I'd rather say the formula equals a predictable business. For them, maintaining the status quo is a better option than taking risks (even minor), but by following the formula, they're missing a lot of opportunities, hence the stagnation.
You're not making these claims in good faith and we all know it. You're not clever or subtle about your biases.
I do wonder sometimes what it'd be like to completely lack any kind of shame.
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Cappuccino
Newcomer
I feel like this is off the mark.
This is the reason people aren’t buying the PS5: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_games
Giving the PS5 DLSS or better RT doesn’t change the fact that buying a console to play a handful of exclusives (most of which aren’t that life changing, Spider-Man 2 was basically Spider-Man 1 which was after all a PS4 game).
The big reason I saw to buy the new consoles back in 2020 was that you could now run Xbone/PS4 games at a higher res with faster load times and usually higher framerates. However that only takes you so far, people that want better image quality on existing last-gen (and current-gen) games are going to flock to PC as the PS5 hardware ages.
I can’t think of a single game that only runs on PS5 and is genuinely worth dropping $500 on a console for (as an aside, the fact that consoles used to get so cheap later in the cycle that they were less of a luxury purchase definitely could help here lol), maybe GTA6 when it comes but everyone knows it’s coming to PC eventually.
DegustatoR
Legend
Infinity cache? I'm sure there were dozens of other possibilities too.
Startups with zero capital are making chips with this "technology" from scratch these days.
Why not? I'll remind you again that this is a discussion about AMD suffering from console sales decline. People are saying that this is console makers issue while I'm saying that it is at least partially an issue of the h/w which these consoles are using. Being "not good enough" is why they suffer now in financials, and being better isn't some magic as basically all their competition has implemented new features in a better/faster way now. It is just embarrassing for AMD GPUs at this point to be this behind everyone including Intel even. So yes it is a very constructive position - they should stop saying how features don't matter and just improve their implementations of those. This in turn will likely help with console sales and their financials eventually.
PS5 has arguably the best exclusive games lineup this year yet (Stellar Blade is setting records in user reviews at the moment) so I don't really buy that being the reason.
At what additional cost? And why are you assuming Microsoft and Sony would have been willing to pay it.
DegustatoR
Legend
I don't know and I'm assuming that both console makers would be willing to pay for anything which would increase the "bang for buck" metric. Sony sure seem to be willing to pay for all that now at least. MS leaked documents suggest that they are entertaining ideas of using non-AMD supplier in the future so they seem to be willing to pay more in theory - if that would provide the benefits they seek.
Those decisions aren’t being made in the same timeframe as the current SKUs. So not comparable.
DegustatoR
Legend
The only reason why they aren't being made in the same timeframe is because AMD is severely behind competition on the building blocks they provide via their "semi"-custom business. Which is exactly what I'm talking about.
It's also the most probable reason why MS is entertaining ideas of switching to Arm and Sony seem to be using a custom AI silicon in the Pro.
Subtlesnake
Regular
You said it could be an issue. If you're now claiming that you know that it is a significant factor, the onus is on you to provide evidence that with extra ray tracing effects and sharper looking performance modes, people would be buying significantly more consoles.
If AMD had more features or performance to offer at the time then MS or Sony could have taken that into consideration. However we don’t know if AMD would have charged the same price or that MS and Sony would have been willing to pay for the advanced tech. This is all parallel universe make believe stuff.
If Sony and MS were willing to spend more on hardware then why didn’t they?
What stopped them from asking AMD to add AI silicon to the original hardware? It’s not like matrix units are some secret sauce that AMD doesn’t know how to make.
Even Intel couldn't reasonably figure out how to integrate AI functionality in their integrated graphics hardware and they're already the poster child of poor graphics perf/area ...
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