Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

AMD bullish on Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 sales despite coronavirus

Chuong Nguyen
By

At its second quarter earnings call, AMD expressed optimism about the upcoming console launch, still set for holiday 2020.

Recommended Videos

While many businesses are facing a tremendous amount of uncertainty as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, AMD seems confident in its upcoming processor launches to pull it through the rest of the year. The company had a stellar fiscal first quarter of 2020 driven by a strong performance of its Ryzen 4000 mobile launch. It’s now looking forward to the second half of this calendar year for the Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5 to help drive the company’s growth during the holiday season.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

“We expect semi-custom revenue to increase in the second quarter and be heavily weighted towards the second half of the year as we ramp production to support the holiday launches of the new PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X consoles,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said during her company’s earnings call, noting that these consoles will be among the biggest product launches of the year.

The company stated that revenue from its console chip business was very negligible in the quarter that just ended, as partners Microsoft and Sony both are looking to reduce inventory ahead of next-generation console launches.

“We expect to see console gross margins improve as we go through the year,” Su added. “Usually what happens is that the second quarter is the first ramp for the consoles, and so the margins start a little bit lower and continues to ramp as we go through the year.”

Microsoft

Ahead of the highly anticipated Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 launches, both Microsoft and Sony have given rare glimpses into the performance of their consoles. Microsoft revealed that the semi-custom GPU developed with AMD in its Xbox Series X console is rated for 12 teraflops of performance, which could put most gaming rigs to shame, And Sony’s PlayStation 5 won’t be far behind in raw performance, coming in with a GPU that’s capable of 10.3 teraflops of computing power. The processors in both consoles will be based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture.

AMD is relying on these technology wins to help mitigate the challenges created by the global pandemic. Both consoles are still expected to be available for purchase this holiday season.

“Although there are some near-term uncertainties in the demand environment, we are well-positioned to navigate through this situation,” Su said. “We have a solid financial foundation, and our product portfolio is very well positioned across the PC, gaming, and data center markets.”

AMD claimed that it was able to “quickly [adopt its] global operations to navigate pockets of supply chain disruption and addressed geographic and market demand shifts caused by COVID-19.” The company did not disclose the extent of COVID-19’s impact on its supply chain, but during this most recent quarter, AMD saw its revenue increase 73% year-over-year driven by increased Ryzen and Radeon processor adoption.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Chuong Nguyen
Chuong Nguyen
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Fallout 4 is finally getting free Xbox Series X and PS5 upgrades
New Fallout 4 Creation Club mod content coming with the Xbox Series X and PS5 launch.

Bethesda has confirmed that the current-gen update for Fallout 4 will finally release on April 25.

That's good timing, as a Fallout TV show just released on Amazon Prime this month to positive buzz. Fallout 4 came out for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One in 2015, and this definitely looks like it will be the most substantial update the game has received since its last expansion was released.

Read more
PlayStation Spring Sale: best deals, how long is the sale, and more
PlayStation Spring Sale logo.

With the rise of all-digital consoles, more and more people are doing a majority of their game shopping on digital storefronts. For PlayStation 5 owners, whether you have a disk drive or not, you more than likely have at least a couple of games purchased from the PlayStation Store. The convenience of simply downloading a game and not having to worry about the disk is great, but you also can catch some amazing deals. The biggest sales events come seasonally, and the current Spring Sale is offering deep discounts of up to 90% on some of the biggest games on the platform. If you've been waiting to pick up one of the great games you missed earlier this year or in years past, now might be the best time to snag it for cheap!
When is the PlayStation Spring Sale 2024?
The PlayStation Spring Sale started on March 27, 2024, but new deals were added on April 10 that will last until April 24.

If any deal is exclusively for a PS5 version of a game that is also on PS4, we will note that beside the title. Since all PS4 games run on PS5, we won't mark PS4 games.
Best deals for the PlayStation Spring Sale
God of War Ragnarök Sony Interactive Entertainment

Read more
I’m secretly hoping that the leaked all-white Xbox Series X isn’t real
An Xbox Series X sits next to both Series S models.

Xbox Microsoft

Xbox’s anticipated mid-generation console refresh might be right around the corner. Over the past few weeks, there have been some rumblings that an all-white Xbox Series X may be coming this year. That rumor kicked into second gear when Exputer posted photos it says it received of the device. The leaked images show a standard Xbox Series X with a white casing. The design is about the same, but there’s one key difference: It doesn’t have a disk drive. If the rumors are proven true, that’ll be the system’s selling point, potentially putting it at a lower price point than the current Series X.

Read more