We already have the first information about Sony’s inevitable PlayStation 6 console: according to a report from Reuters Agencyand chipmaker Intel lost a bid to make chips for the next-generation PlayStation. One factor that reportedly led to Sony’s decision to choose AMD was ensuring backward compatibility with the current-generation PlayStation 5.
Sony’s PS5 has an AMD CPU — a custom AMD Zen 2 — and a GPU — a custom AMD RDNA 2 for the base PS5 and RDNA 3 for the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro. According to Reuters, the switch to Intel chips could have compromised backward compatibility, or at least made backward compatibility support more costly for Sony engineers. The PlayStation 4 also ran on AMD processors.
The PlayStation manufacturer 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 also supported its two predecessors. Sony broke the streak of backward compatibility with the PS4, which did not support PS3 games out of the box but eventually offered access to them via emulation.
A Reuters report on the PS6 suggests that Sony intends to support PS5 games on its yet-to-be-announced next-gen console, which lacks a clear release window. Sony only announced the PS5 Pro last week, with a November launch. A PS6 console is almost certainly still years away, given the seven-year gap between the PS4 and PS5 launches.
