There has been plenty of talk recently about the next generation of consoles. These vague confirmations ranged from Microsoft confirming new Xbox consoles were in development at E3 2018 to John Kodera, the CEO and president of Sony, confirming that the PlayStation 4 was at the end of its life cycle and that Sony would spend the next 3 years “preparing for the future“. While there has been much discourse about the fact that the new generation is getting closer and closer, very little has been talked about in regards to specific details, and of course nothing has been shown yet.
Lisa Su, CEO and president of AMD, recently spoke with Jim Cramer of Mad Money, stating that “We’re working with both Sony and Microsoft on consoles.” She would also later mention during the interview that AMD was making investments towards the future that would not be seen for “three, four, five years”, though not specifically mentioning what those investments were part of. It is likely that she was speaking of Sony and Microsoft, as the statement about three to five years coincides with the likely release window of the next generation of consoles. This veiled statement matches specifically with what was said earlier by Sony in their preparation for when the PlayStation 4 reaches the end of its life cycle.
While Sony and Microsoft have both released new versions of their current generation consoles relatively recently with the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X respectively, they are still constantly trying to ride the bleeding edge of technology. Both of them working with AMD is no surprise, as AMD has been working with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo since 2013, in a symbiotic relationship. The main surprise here is that thanks to the fact that we now essentially have a release window for when to expect the next generation of consoles, we can expect more details on what the next generation will entail sooner rather than later.