Sarah Bond, Xbox President, just confirmed that Microsoft and AMD have entered into a long-term partnership, and that both companies will co-engineer silicon across a “portfolio of devices” that also includes future Xbox consoles.
Bond’s statement clearly means that the partnership will see Microsoft and AMD investing in the development of consoles, handhelds, PC, cloud, and accessories. We’re assuming that for the first two, it applies to both currently existing and future products.
“At Xbox, our vision is for you to play the games you want, with the people, with the people you want, anywhere you want. That’s why we’re investing our next-generation hardware lineup, across console, handheld, PC, cloud, and accessories. I am thrilled to share we’ve established a multi-year partnership with AMD to co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices including our next generation Xbox consoles, in your living room, and in your hands.”
As for why the strategic partnership with AMD, that answer is very clearly self-explanatory. Last week, ASUS officially unveiled the existence of the ROG Xbox Ally X and Ally. Powered by AMD’s latest Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and Z2 A chipsets, the two consoles were also designed in partnership with Xbox but the takeaway for the gaming handhelds are that they run special edition of the ROG Armoury Crate OS that has been tweaked by Microsoft’s gaming division.
The announcement also fuels further speculation on whether or not Xbox is planning on releasing its own future gaming handheld and given the language used by Bond, it certainly sounds like it. In the mean time, we’ll just be content with ASUS passing us an ROG Ally X; it’s likely that the PC brand will be bringing the gaming handheld into Malaysia, and not Microsoft.
(Source: Xbox via YouTube)
