PlayStation 6 chip chosen back in 2022, partly over backward compatibility

We already have our first information on Sony’s inevitable PlayStation 6: It will run on AMD chips, according to a report from Reuters, with chipmaker Intel having lost the bid to manufacture chips for the next-gen PlayStation. One factor that reportedly led to Sony settling on AMD was ensuring backward compatibility with the current-gen PlayStation 5.

Sony’s PS5 features an AMD CPU — a custom AMD Zen 2 — and GPU — a custom AMD RDNA 2 for the base PS5, and RDNA 3 for the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro. According to Reuters, moving to Intel-made chips could have put backward compatibility at risk, or at least made it more expensive for Sony’s engineers to support backward compatibility. The PlayStation 4 also ran on AMD-made processors.

The PlayStation maker has a history of supporting backward compatibility between consoles. The PlayStation 2 played original PlayStation games out of the box. Early versions of the PlayStation 3 likewise supported its two predecessors. Sony broke its backward compatibility streak with the PS4, which did not support PS3 games out of the box, but ultimately offered access to them through emulation.

Reuters’ report on the PS6 would certainly indicate that Sony intends to support PS5 games on its next-gen console, which has not been announced and has no clear release window. Sony just announced the PS5 Pro last week, for a November launch. A PS6 console is almost assuredly still years away, given the seven-year gap between the release of the PS4 and PS5.

Sony’s decision to go with AMD over Intel reportedly dates back to 2022. But the PlayStation maker likely started working on its PS5 successor well before that. According to Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, Sony typically “begin[s] working on the next-generation platform almost a day after you ship whatever the current generation is.” In an interview with the What’s Up PlayStation podcast, Layden said, “the minute you ship a product you already have a team way, way in the back […] who’s already working on the next version.”

Rival Microsoft — which also uses AMD chips to power its Xbox Series X — expects the next-generation of consoles to start as early as 2028, according to court documents from the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Microsoft over its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.