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Employee reveals AMD was close to bankruptcy, but PlayStation 4 helped avoid it

AMD might've not been a thing anymore if Sony PS4 wasn't a big success (Image source: Sony and AMD [edited])
AMD might've not been a thing anymore if Sony PS4 wasn't a big success (Image source: Sony and AMD [edited])
PlayStation 4 is one of the most successful consoles Sony has released. Renato Fragale, AMD's current Sr. Director of OEM Consumer & Gaming Client Business, says this success has also saved AMD from bankruptcy.

Today, AMD is seen as one of the leaders in the chip industry, but just a decade ago, the company was near bankruptcy. At least, that's what Renato Fragale, the company's current Sr. Director of OEM Consumer & Gaming Client Business, has revealed. It's because of the successful launch of PlayStation 4 that the company could avoid bankruptcy.

This information was recently uncovered on Fragale's LinkedIn profile, where it had gone unnoticed for a long time. Fragale wrote about it in the details section of Sr. Manager Product Development Engineering role he played from Jun 2012 to Jul 2014.

One of the responsibilities from the role states that Fragale managed the "product development team for Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4)," which is seen as "one of the most successful launches in AMD history." The most interesting bit that Fragale has highlighted in the same sentence is that this successful launch has helped "AMD avoid bankruptcy."

The company's own earnings call from the time tells a similar story. AMD announced in 2013 that it had a net loss of $83 million, and the year-over-year total revenue saw a 2% decrease. After the Sony PS4 was launched, the numbers jumped with a 4% increase in year-on-year revenue, netting $5.51 billion.

PS4, which Sony has sold over 117 million units, is based on a custom AMD Jaguar architecture CPU and GCN architecture GPU. The latest PlayStation 5 (available on Amazon) also relies on AMD hardware, packing a custom Ryzen CPU with Radeon RDNA 2-based GPU.

Besides providing hardware to Sony, the company now has a strong position in the PC market, and it holds a very firm ground in the handheld section. So, it goes without saying that if AMD had gone bankrupt in 2014, the PC landscape would've been very different from what it is now.

Source(s)

@bogorad222 on X (tweet embedded above)

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2024 07 > Employee reveals AMD was close to bankruptcy, but PlayStation 4 helped avoid it
Abid Ahsan Shanto, 2024-07- 5 (Update: 2024-07- 5)