AMD employee reveals PS4 helped company avoid bankruptcy

An AMD employee’s LinkedIn profile has given a slight insight into the industry’s inner workings, revealing that the release of the PS4 helped the company avoid bankruptcy.

According to the LinkedIn profile of Renato Fragale, the current Senior Director of OEM Consumer & Gaming Client Business at AMD, the company’s work on Sony’s PlayStation 4 helped AMD avoid bankruptcy.

On his LinkedIn profile, Fragale wrote:

“Managed 15-person product development team for Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4) that has sold over 91Mu to date. 

“Viewed as one of the most successful launches in AMD history helping AMD to avoid bankruptcy.”

Fragale was Senior Manager for Product Development Engineering at the time of the PS4’s release.

The PS4 was announced in February 2013 and launched in November. Sony’s console hopped over to x86 architecture from the PS3’s Cell, powered by AMD’s chips.

AMD has almost always been involved in some aspect of game console development. ATI, who provided chips for the GameCube and Wii, was bought by AMD in 2006. ATI also helped provide the Xenos GPU for the Xbox 360.

Since its buyout, AMD has provided chips for not just the PS4, but the current generation of consoles with its RDNA 2 architecture. The Steam Deck also uses a custom AMD chip, as does Asus and Lenovo with their handhelds.

While Fragale mentions 91 million units sold, the number is out of date. Current estimates and Sony’s own numbers put that total at around 117 million.

AMD

Comparing where AMD is today, it’s a completely different story. Since 2013, AMD has revitalized its PC component lineup. 

Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs are consistently recommended and proven to be the best at their price point. While the GPU market isn’t hitting the same strides, its current slate of graphics cards remains competitive with Nvidia.

You can even compare it with the company’s own earnings calls. In 2013, AMD announced a net loss of $83 million, with a 2% decrease year-on-year for total revenue (which tallied $5.3 billion). 

Compare this a year after the PS4 launched, these numbers increased to a 4% year-on-year, netting $5.51 billion in revenue. Its net loss was more detailed in the final 2014 report, with an annual net loss of $403 million. 

This growth doesn’t seem to have stopped either, with the company in 2023 reporting $22.7 billion in total revenue.

If AMD went bankrupt in 2014, we wouldn’t have chiplet-style CPUs, Handheld APUs, and far fewer options in the PC hardware market.