Intel reportedly lost $30 billion in potential revenue due to failed PlayStation 6 chip manufacturing contract

A new report from Reuters states Intel and AMD were the final bidders for who gets to manufacture the PlayStation 6's chip. The list included heavy hitters such as Broadcom who ultimately bowed out of the competition. Ultimately, AMD won the contract due to Intel's inability to reach a profit-sharing deal with Sony. Furthermore, providing backward compatibility with existing PS5 (and potentially PS4) titles was an additional challenge that deterred Intel.

According to Intel's internal projections shared by the source, the company's failure to secure Sony as a customer could potentially cost it $30 billion. Plus, it could have given an impetus to Intel Foundry by keeping its assembly lines occupied for five years. Then again, AMD has far more experience making console hardware while Intel has virtually no experience in that field. Lunar Lake-powered Windows handhelds like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ should help Intel establish its name in the market, but it may be a while before Sony/Microsoft picks Intel over AMD.

Apparently, the encounter happened sometime in 2022, a full six years before the PlayStation 6 is slated to drop in 2028. It is unclear if AMD has started developing the PS6 APU just yet, but if it has, we can expect it to use a mix of Zen 6 and RDNA 5 parts.