Rumours of the PlayStation 4.5 or 4K have been swelling by quite a bit recently and AMD, the manufacturer for the custom GPUs powering the PS4 and Xbox One, may have hinted at it further.
During its quarterly earnings call for this year, AMD stated that, “In our EESC segment, we had record shipments of our semi-custom SoCs powering the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game consoles.”
The next part is interesting. “Demand for game consoles looks strong for 2016 and we remain on track to generate additional revenue from new semi-custom business in the second half of 2016.
“Game consoles — we see units going up 2016 to 2015. We’ve also said in the enterprise embedded and semi-custom segment that we will be ramping some new design revenue in the second half of 2016. We have new products being introduced in both the businesses with the new design wins in the second half on the semi-custom side.”
That “semi-custom” line seems to hint at a semi-custom SoC for consoles, particularly the PS4.5. It further stated that, “While we expect revenue to be lower in the first half of 2016 compared to the second half based on the seasonality of the PC and game console businesses, we remain focused on successfully executing our product and technology roadmaps and plan to return AMD to non-GAAP operating profitability in the second half of 2016 and generate positive cash flow from operations for the year.”
Does this confirm the release of the PS4.5? Maybe not but it does indicate that AMD is preparing for something in the console business and it will have a significant impact on revenue in the second half of 2016 (i.e post E3). We can’t think of any other hardware that would cause such a revenue spike so we’ll see how things pan out.
