A semiconductor industry analyst surmised that Sony was that customer based on its results for the same quarter. And it is that AMD supplies the main chip of the PlayStation 5 console of sony. As it does with the Xbox series of Microsoft.
The quarter ending December 31, 2022 was the best in history for PlayStation 5 sales, with 7.1 million units sold. And console sales are money for AMD. Less than Nintendo Switch, this one uses a SoC of NVIDIA.
Combined sales for the first three quarters of Sony’s fiscal year 2022 (running from March to December) reached 12.8 million, bringing total console sales to 38 million. Sony expects to sell another 6.2 million PS5s by March 31, 2023.
According to analyst Sravan Kundojjala, Sony not only accounts for 16% of AMD’s net revenue in 2022, but that number could rise as high as 20%which makes the manufacturer of PlayStation the largest customer of AMD.
Despite Xbox sales, Sony is far ahead of Microsoft
Other analyzes by Kundojjala suggest that PS5 shipments exceed Xbox shipments by more than 60%. And while Microsoft stopped publishing Xbox sales numbers a while back, opting instead to focus on subscriptions and digital sales, the difference seems clear.
Speaking on a financial results conference call, AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company expected gaming revenue to decline year-over-year when it came to consoles.
This could suggest that AMD expects console demand to peak in 2023 or that console sales have exceeded the company’s expectations in 2022.
Game console sales are already the most likely reason why revenue from AMD in Q4 2022 they were 11% behind NVIDIA’s, despite NVIDIA earning much more in total and selling many more gaming GPUs.