The standard view has all the time been that video games consoles have been a helpful however comparatively petite contribution to AMD’s total revenues. Seems that is not completely true. In actual fact, Sony’s PS5 alone represented absolutely 16% of AMD’s revenues in 2022 and sure 1 / 4 of revenues got here from Sony and Microsoft consoles mixed.
That is in response to an official AMD submitting (opens in new tab) (through Tom’s {Hardware} (opens in new tab)). “One buyer accounted for 16% of our consolidated internet income for the 12 months ended December 31, 2022. Gross sales to this buyer consisted of gross sales of merchandise from our Gaming phase,” the submitting revealed.
That buyer can solely actually be Sony and the PS5 (opens in new tab), which comfortably outsells the Xbox Collection consoles. After all, AMD wasn’t simply chargeable for the PS5’s APU, it additionally created the chips for each Microsoft’s Collection X and S consoles (opens in new tab).
Estimates of total volumes thus far for each consoles put Sony’s PS5 roughly within the 30 million to 32 million vary, with the MS Collection consoles on a bit over 20 million.
AMD hasn’t detailed revenues particularly for Microsoft consoles, however primarily based on these numbers, if 30 odd million console chips is 16% of AMD’s enterprise, one other 20 odd million will probably be roughly 10% and mixed you are within the area of 25% of AMD’s revenues comes from these gaming consoles. Throw within the Steam Deck, additionally packing a chip from the purple workforce’s semi-custom silicon division, and that is perhaps a conservative estimate.
AMD’s gaming income total, together with each console chips and GPUs for PCs, was down 7% in 2022. We all know that PC GPU gross sales fell dramatically final 12 months (opens in new tab), so the comparatively modest 7% decline total displays these robust console chip gross sales, with AMD’s CEO Lisa Su observing that, “semi-custom SoC income grew year-over-year as demand for recreation consoles remained robust throughout the holidays.”
Nonetheless, with each the Sony PS5 and MS Collection consoles maturing, these revenues are more likely to decline in 2023 and past, as gross sales plateau or fall and console makers are likely to pay much less for chips over the life cycle of a given platform.
For the report, AMD generated a complete of $6.8 billion income from gaming chips, $6 billion from knowledge middle chips, $6.2 billion from PC processors, and $4.5 billion from embedded chips.
That $6 billion from the information middle in 2022 is getting on for double what AMD made in 2021. So, the corporate’s fortunes are shifting quickly, proper now, away from laptops and desktops, together with gaming rigs, in direction of knowledge middle {hardware} and consoles.
These items is inevitably cyclical. Having gone by means of fairly the improve cycle over the pandemic, gross sales of CPUs and GPUs have cratered. For these avid gamers who purchased Nvidia RTX 30-series (opens in new tab) and AMD RX 6000-series GPUs (opens in new tab) or Intel twelfth Gen CPUs or AMD Ryzen 5000-series chips in the previous couple of years, the very newest {hardware} arguably is not vastly compelling, particularly given how graphics card costs have escalated.
No matter, proper now the nice previous gaming PC seems to be very very similar to a minority enterprise for AMD. Which is a barely uncomfortable place for PC avid gamers hoping for higher future {hardware} at decrease costs.