Intel seeks to get inside Microsoft's next-gen Xbox console, potentially snatching away lucrative share from AMD

[DuckDodgers]

A new rumor mill indicates Intel is hard pitching its offerings to Microsoft for the next Xbox. If the rumor has some leg, this will be the first time in 20 years the chip veteran could find its way in a gaming console.

 

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Intel is reportedly pitching Microsoft to work on an "all American" semi-custom SoC for Microsoft's next Xbox generation that succeeds the Series X/S. The company's main pitch to Microsoft is the fact that the chip would be made entirely in the US, including its silicon fabrication and packaging. Microsoft currently relies on AMD for its SoC, which combines an AMD "Zen 2" CPU with a powerful RDNA2 iGPU that meets DirectX 12 Ultimate requirements.

 

Intel's semi-custom chip could be functionally the same, albeit based on its next generation CPU and graphics microarchitectures. Strengthening Intel's case is the fact that it now has a contemporary high performance gaming graphics architecture in Xe "Alchemist," and is on course to launch its successor, the Xe² "Battlemage," later this year. The company also made huge strides with chiplet-based SoCs as demonstrated with "Meteor Lake." Intel's semi-custom SoC for Microsoft could combine any of its upcoming CPU microarchitectures, such as "Lunar Lake," or "Panther Lake," and an iGPU based on "Battlemage" or Xe³ "Celestial." This chip could also integrate a next generation NPU if the platform calls for one. This wouldn't be Intel's first rodeo with powering a console; in fact the very first Microsoft Xbox was powered by a Pentium 3 "Coppermine" CPU, paired with a discrete GeForce 3 GPU supplied by NVIDIA.

 

Considering the mail source of the rumor (see below), don't put too much hope in it -- it's still hearsay with generous amount of assumptions.

On the other hand, a potential deal for Intel would reinvigorate their further GPU R&D that would also be a positive contribution to the PC market competitive landscape.

 

Sources:

https://www.techpowerup.com/318820/intel-looking-to-grab-microsoft-xbox-semi-custom-soc-business-from-amd

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/95974/intel-wants-to-be-inside-microsofts-next-gen-xbox-console-would-built-in-the-usa/index.html

 

 

[TempestCatto]

It's gonna take a lot more than Netflix and chill to get inside Microsoft...

[Dabombinable]

Considering the reasons Intel didn't continue partnering with Microsoft past the OG Xbox - I highly doubt that Microsoft will work with them.

[Lunar River]

11 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Considering the reasons Intel didn't continue partnering with Microsoft past the OG Xbox - I highly doubt that Microsoft will work with them.

Considering first party Microsoft devices are primarily intel these days, I think those grievances are probably put to rest

[starsmine]

10 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Considering the reasons Intel didn't continue partnering with Microsoft past the OG Xbox - I highly doubt that Microsoft will work with them.

3 Core PowerPC (with SMT) probably just made more sense to MS then a duel core netburst based intel CPU (with larger latency between cores) which was what intel had available at the time. There isn't any bad blood there. Netburst was well known to not be competitive at the time. 

The LOWEST wattage Pentium D part was 95 Watts and only ran at 2.7ghz with a tray price of 93 USD.

remeber the 360 ran at 3.2 GHZ and LAUNCHED at 300 USD. And had a smaller die.

This wasnt a "burned by intel" move it was Intel can not meet our needs for the next gen move. I cant imagine a single person at Intel took it personally. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Lunar River said:

Considering first party Microsoft devices are primarily intel these days, I think those grievances are probably put to rest

Not really anymore, a lot of their devices are just old and not hardware updated. Only the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is Intel 13th Gen and everything else is 12th Gen with a few AMD options in the laptop product line (not 2 in 1).

 

Microsoft doesn't really care about these companies that much, whoever has the best product support followed by technical specifications and performance wins out. AMD's weak point has always been product support, if you want to develop a product you'd want to do it with Intel over AMD just from that.

 

Consoles are a bit different, raw performance actually matters a lot because it's a 2 horse race and how pretty the horse looks doesn't make it run the race any faster.

[Lunar River]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Consoles are a bit different, raw performance actually matters a lot because it's a 2 horse race and how pretty the horse looks doesn't make it run the race any faster.

I've also seen rumours that MS is wanting to get out of the console hardware market completely, given that they seem to be bringing a few xbox exclusives to playstation

 

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/microsoft-is-reportedly-considering-bringing-gears-of-war-to-playstation/

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

3 Core PowerPC (with SMT) probably just made more sense to MS then a duel core netburst based intel CPU (with larger latency between cores) which was what intel had available at the time. There isn't any bad blood there. Netburst was well known to not be competitive at the time. 

The LOWEST wattage Pentium D part was 95 Watts and only ran at 2.7ghz with a tray price of 93 USD.

remeber the 360 ran at 3.2 GHZ and LAUNCHED at 300 USD. And had a smaller die.

This wasnt a "burned by intel" move it was Intel can not meet our needs for the next gen move. I cant imagine a single person at Intel took it personally. 

Thing is. Microsoft wanted the rights to manufacture the CPU and GPU. Something that IBM and Ati were willing to allow. Microsoft secured the manufacturing rights from IBM, and secured the IP rights for the design from Ati - giving them a level of control that they otherwise would not have had driving the cost/unit far higher.

You have to remeber as well, Netburst wasn't the only architecture that Intel had. They were still working with P6 derived designs. Pentium M/Dothan (launched 2003) from the time crushed anything Netburst when it came to IPC and power consumption. Pentium M 770 matches a P4 HT 3.2GHz (Northwood) in performance while having under half the power consumption.

[tim0901]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Consoles are a bit different, raw performance actually matters a lot because it's a 2 horse race and how pretty the horse looks doesn't make it run the race any faster.

The other thing that matters though is money.

 

If Intel are willing to continue to undercut AMD that might make them a very appealing option to Microsoft, especially for a Series S replacement where you're not looking for bleeding-edge performance anyway.

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, Lunar River said:

I've also seen rumours that MS is wanting to get out of the console hardware market completely, given that they seem to be bringing a few xbox exclusives to playstation

 

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/microsoft-is-reportedly-considering-bringing-gears-of-war-to-playstation/

I've always thought Windows should just have an Xbox Mode ever since they tried the Xbox Game Bar thing or whatever it was called, and their other one or two iterations of a Windows Game platform (my Dawn of War II used it).

 

We don't really need Xbox hardware other than low cost easy option but MS could partner with an ODM/OEM for that option.

 

Only problem I see is GPU diversity, mainly AMD vs Nvidia but that just makes it more PC development than console so is that "bad"?

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, tim0901 said:

The other thing that matters though is money.

 

If Intel are willing to continue to undercut AMD that might make them a very appealing option to Microsoft, especially for a Series S replacement where you're not looking for bleeding-edge performance anyway.

Intel also has competitive iGPU and dGPU now which makes them an option for an integrated custom SoC or traditional hardware design. It would be silly not to engage and explore options with them even without any intention to commit to going with them. Always good to evaluate options.

[Monkey Dust]

6 minutes ago, Lunar River said:

I've also seen rumours that MS is wanting to get out of the console hardware market completely, given that they seem to be bringing a few xbox exclusives to playstation

 

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/microsoft-is-reportedly-considering-bringing-gears-of-war-to-playstation/

Yeah, the rumours are mounting and MS are doing nothing to dispel them. Not going to be great for the industry if they bow out.

[porina]

Now does seem to be the time for MS to talk to hardware suppliers about a next gen console. Assuming the ~7 year generation cycle, we're just over 3 years in. You'd want to lock in the basic/high level design intent 2-3 years before launch. It wont be based on today's Intel products, but whatever is available in the next year or two. Given we're towards the end of Intel's fab catch up process, expect more change than recent history.

[GOTSpectrum]

On 2/8/2024 at 8:57 AM, leadeater said:

I've always thought Windows should just have an Xbox Mode ever since they tried the Xbox Game Bar thing or whatever it was called, and their other one or two iterations of a Windows Game platform (my Dawn of War II used it).

 

We don't really need Xbox hardware other than low cost easy option but MS could partner with an ODM/OEM for that option.

 

Only problem I see is GPU diversity, mainly AMD vs Nvidia but that just makes it more PC development than console so is that "bad"?

Funnily enough I always thought Xbox should have a windows mode...

 

Imagine selling your console as a console that can be a relatively powerful PC for work and play

[Salted Spinach]

If you've been following Xbox news recently, they seem to be thinking of focusing on services and game sales instead of being an exclusive platform competing with Sony. Developing and pushing console hardware is a big cost. This option is available to Microsoft because they will always have the PC gaming market.

 

Intel might be trying to entice Xbox to stay in the hardware race with attractive chip pricing. They have deep pockets to bear the cost. What Intel probably wants is developers forced to optimise their games for Intel graphics.

 

Terribly optimised console ports? Wait till the devs are forced to commit resources for the additional graphics vendor.

 

6 hours ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Funnily enough I always thought Xbox should have a windows mode...

 

Imagine selling your console as a console that can be a relatively powerful PC for work and play

They won't do that

 

1. MS has deals with the PC hardware industry to drive hardware sales. See the latest Windows always part of marketing new laptops. Also the TPM scare tactic for desktop users. Behind the scenes, the office computer OEMs also use the TPM argument to push whole fleet replacements. 

 

2. There is nothing stopping Sony from copying the move. It cannot be made an Xbox exclusive

 

3. If suddenly every console at home becomes a fully capable PC, hardware manufacturers are going to lose billions in revenue and hate MS

 

4. Why pay the higher Xbox price for games if you can boot into Windows and ditch the platform fees

 

Its as good as asking Apple to allow iPhones to dual boot Android or Windows

[GOTSpectrum]

7 minutes ago, Salted Spinach said:

They won't do that

 

1. MS has deals with the PC hardware industry to drive hardware sales. See the latest Windows always part of marketing new laptops. Also the TPM scare tactic for desktop users. Behind the scenes, the office computer OEMs also use the TPM argument to push whole fleet replacements. 

 

2. There is nothing stopping Sony from copying the move. It cannot be made an Xbox exclusive

 

3. If suddenly every console at home becomes a fully capable PC, hardware manufacturers are going to lose billions in revenue and hate MS

 

4. Why pay the higher Xbox price for games if you can boot into Windows and ditch the platform fees

I never said they would do it... Just that I thought about it 

[Mark Kaine]

Next Xbox console??

 

Phil Spencer still not done? wowzers, get the hint dude... 

[Mark Kaine]

22 hours ago, GOTSpectrum said:

Funnily enough I always thought Xbox should have a windows mode...

 

Imagine selling your console as a console that can be a relatively powerful PC for work and play

funny enough, from the first day, that "myth" already existed... so for "some" people this is a reality lol... 

 

Sony did that, it was called PS3, had an actually revolutionary CPU in it, it didn't do too hot, almost killed the entire company. 

 

i still wish they would have gone through with their crazy "2 CPUs, we don't need a GPU!" idea.

 

 

[Zodiark1593]

14 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

funny enough, from the first day, that "myth" already existed... so for "some" people this is a reality lol... 

 

Sony did that, it was called PS3, had an actually revolutionary CPU in it, it didn't do too hot, almost killed the entire company. 

 

i still wish they would have gone through with their crazy "2 CPUs, we don't need a GPU!" idea.

 

 

Cell wasn’t super interesting in the end, ngl. The PPE was really no better than netburst (dual-issue, in-order), if not considerably worse at general-purpose code. Sure, the SPEs acted as psuedo compute-shaders, but I think Sony would’ve been far better off scrapping the exotic Cell idea, delaying a year, and launched with C2D, 8800 GTX, and 1 gb total ram. Would’ve flattened the 360 out the gate, be far easier to utilize than Cell, and carried them well into the gen after. 
 

As for the gap between the PS2 and PS3, Sony could’ve probably launched a sort of PS2 Plus, with a 4x sized Graphics Synthesizer unit (or 2x the pixel pipes and double up on clocks). Given that it’s literally just a rasterizer, it should be relatively easy to force games to run at 4x resolution for no performance hit. Throw in some extra memory for texture enhanced games, and you’ve got something that would satisfy the Sony crowd for a bit longer. 

[Mark Kaine]

26 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Cell wasn’t super interesting in the end, ngl. The PPE was really no better than netburst (dual-issue, in-order), if not considerably worse at general-purpose code. Sure, the SPEs acted as psuedo compute-shaders, but I think Sony would’ve been far better off scrapping the exotic Cell idea, delaying a year, and launched with C2D, 8800 GTX, and 1 gb total ram. Would’ve flattened the 360 out the gate, be far easier to utilize than Cell, and carried them well into the gen after. 
 

As for the gap between the PS2 and PS3, Sony could’ve probably launched a sort of PS2 Plus, with a 4x sized Graphics Synthesizer unit (or 2x the pixel pipes and double up on clocks). Given that it’s literally just a rasterizer, it should be relatively easy to force games to run at 4x resolution for no performance hit. Throw in some extra memory for texture enhanced games, and you’ve got something that would satisfy the Sony crowd for a bit longer. 

i hindsight,  yeah sure, i still think it made sense at the time... collabs like the ibm-sony one were very common back then and well the cell wasn't as great and widespread as they'd hoped... it was a risk... and it literally almost killed sony and ibm is nowhere to be seen in consumer electronics now...

the only thing they succeeded was the "media war" with bluray... which was pretty futile im hindsight too lol...

 

 

i bought a bluray "home theater" in 2011 or so... it was very awesome looking,  great performance...and EXTREMELY loud and hot (yes it had a "cell" processor) lmao

 

returned the thing after a few days it was just unbearably loud...

[dogwitch]

Moore's Law is Dead..

every sit claim goes back to that person.

that not how real news reporting works

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Cell wasn’t super interesting in the end, ngl. The PPE was really no better than netburst (dual-issue, in-order), if not considerably worse at general-purpose code.

The PPE wasn't responsible for much computation at all so wasn't really a performance limiter. Also Cell was 100% designed for HPC compute and also used for the PS3 because it had raw performance far beyond anything even a few years after it, C2D was vastly slower.

 

The problem was it was a bitch to actually utilize, everyone (game devs) bloody hated the thing.

 

IBM Cell had 5x the GFLOPs of C2D, in fact a 2500k is "slower"

[Taf the Ghost]

I'm going to take this as Xbox has in the last 6 months put out the design layout they'd like for their next console stack to the few companies that could possibly probably provide the core hardware. I think this got out because someone at Intel was just happy to be included in the list.

 

Still not sure where Intel would get the tightly packaged GPU that'd be needed.

[hishnash]

I think qaulcome have a better chance of getting the next generation of xbox than intel.   But might be fabbed on Intels factories. 

[hishnash]

On 2/10/2024 at 6:42 PM, GOTSpectrum said:

Funnily enough I always thought Xbox should have a windows mode...

 

It would need to cost 2x the price and most game devs would be unhappy as users would rather buy games for $20 on steam sale than $50 to $80 on the console.   

 

What makes the consoles succeed for devs and for console makers is the fact you cant just run anything on it.