AMD gaming revenue declined massively year-over-year, CFO says the demand is 'weak'

Poor Xbox sales have affected AMD’S bottom line

[RonsonPL]

Oh wow. How surprising! Nvidia overpriced their RTX cards by +100% and AMD instead of offering real competition, decided to join Nvidia in their greedy approach, while not having the same mindshare as Nvidia (sadly) does. The 7900 launch was a marketing disaster. All the reviews were made while the card was not worth the money at all, they lowered the price a bit later on, but not only not enough but also too late and out of "free marketing" window coming along with the new card generation release. Then the geniuses at AMD axed the high-end SKUs with increased cache etc, cause "nobody will buy expensive cards to play games" while Nvidia laughed at them selling their 2000€ 4090s.
Intel had all the mindshare among PC enthusiasts with their CPUs. All it took was a competetive product and good price (Ryzen 7000 series and especially 7800x3d) and guess what? AMD regained the market share in DYI PCs in no time! The same could've have happened with Radeon 5000, Radeon 6000 and Radeon 7000.
But meh. Why bother. Let's cancell high-end RDNA 4 and use the TSMC wafers for AI and then let the clueless "analysts" make their articles about "gaming demand dwingling".

I'm sure low-end, very overpriced and barely faster if not slower RDNA4 will turn things around. It will have AI and RT! Two things nobody asked for, especially not gamers who'd like to use the PC for what's most exciting about PC gaming (VR, high framerate gaming, hi-res gaming).
8000 series will be slow, overpriced and marketed based on its much improved RT/AI... and it will flop badly.
And there will be no sane conclusions made at AMD about that. There will be just one, insane: Gaming is not worth catering to. Let's go into AI/RT instead, what could go wrong..."

[Crows90]

What would you say would be the correct pricing for new cards?

Very insightful post!

[RonsonPL]

That's a complicated question. Depends on what you mean. The pricing at the release date or the pricing planned ahead. They couldn't just suddenly end up in a situation where their existing stock of 6000 cards is suddenly unsellable, but if it was properly rolled out, the prices should be where they were while PC gaming industry was healthy. I recognize the arguments about inflation, higher power draw and PCB/BOM costs, more expensive wafers from TSMC etc. but still, PC gaming needs some sanity to exist and be healthy. Past few years were very unhealthy and dangerous to whole PC gaming. AMD should recognize this market is very good for them as they have advantage in software for gaming and other markets while attractive short term, may be just too difficult to compete at. AI is the modern day gold rush and Nvidia and Intel can easily out-spend AMD on R&D. Meanwhile gaming is tricky for newcomers and Nvidia doesn't seem to care that much about gaming anymore. So I would argue that it should be in AMDs interest to even sell some Radeon SKUs at zero profit, just to prevent the PC gaming from collapsing. Cards like 6400 and 6500 should never exist at their prices. This tier was traditionally "office only" and priced at 50$ in early 2000s. Then we have Radeons 7600 which is not really 6-tier card. Those were traditionally quite performant cards based on wider than 128-bit memory bus. Also 8GB is screaming "low end". So I'd say the 7600 should've been available at below 200$ (+taxes etc.) as soon as possible, at least for some cheaper SKUs.For faster cards, the situation is bad for AMD, because people spending like $400+ are usually fairly knowledgable and demanding. While personally I don't see any value in upscallers and RT for 400-700$ cards, the fact is that especially DLSS is a valuable feature for potential buyers. Therefore, even 7800 and 7900 cards should be significantly cheaper than they currently are. People knew what they were paying for when buying Radeon 9700, 9800, X800, 4870 etc. They were getting gaming experience truly unlike console or low-end PC gaming. By all means, let's have expensive AMD cards for even above $1000, but first, AMD needs to show value. Make the product attractive. PS5 consoles can be bought at 400$. If AMD offers just a slightly better upscalled image on the 400$ GPU, or their 900$ GPU cannot even push 3x as many fps compared to cheap consoles, the pricing acts like cancer on PC gaming. And poor old PC gaming can endure only so much.

[MrCrimson]

I appreciate your rant sir, but it has very little to do with gpus. It is the fact that the PS5 and Xbox are in end cycle before a refresh.

[RonsonPL]

Yes, but also no. AMD let their PC GPU marketshare to shrink by a lot (and accidentally helped the whole market shrink in general due to bad value of PC GPUs over the years) and while their console business may be important here, I'd still argue their profits from GPU division could've been much better if not for mismanagement.

[bababooiy]

This is something many have argued over the last few years when it comes to AMD. The days of them selling their cards at a slight discount while having a similar offering are over. Its not just a matter of poor drivers anymore, they are behind on everything.

[RNTody]

Great post. I went for a Nvidia RTX 3060Ti which was insane value for money when I look at the fidelity and frame rates I can push in most games including new releases. Can't justify spending 3 times what my card cost at the time to get marginal better returns or the big sell of "ray tracing", which is a nice to have feature but hardly essential given what it costs to maintain.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Well that's gonna happen when you don't really try. I want to support AMD so badly and give Nvidia some actual competition but they don't very much seem interested in challenging, by their own accord. I been waiting for them to attack the GPU segment the same way they took over CPU, but they just seem so content with handing Nvidia the market year after year, and it's happening again this year with their cancelled high end card.

[MrCrimson]

I think you're going to see almost zero interest from AMD or Nvidia on the gaming GPU market. They are all in on AI.

[RhinoGamer88]

No Executive bonuses then...right?

[enkiduxiv]

What are smoking? Got to layoff your way to those bonuses. Fire 500 employees right before Christmas. That should get you there.

[Tapani]

Well, if you are 48% down in Q4 in your Gaming sector as they are, which in absolute money terms is north of 500M USD, then you are not likely to get at least your quarterly STI, but can be applicable for annual STI. The LTI may be something you are still eligible for, such as RSUs or other equity and benefits, especially if they are based on the company total result rather than your unit. All depends on your contract and AMD's reward system.

[MrCrimson]

Lisa Su took AMD from bankruptcy to one of the best semiconductor companies on the planet. AMD from 2 dollars a share to 147. She can take whatever she wants.

[Tapani]

You are not wrong about what she did for AMD and that is remarkable. However, MNCs' Rewards schemes do not work like "take whatever you want, because you performed well in the past".

[darksky]

AMD prcied their cards thinking that they will sell out just like in the mining craze. I suspect reality has hit home when they realized most gamers cannot afford to spend over $500 for a gpu.

[purple101]

Since no one seems to have read the article, here we go

“ Gaming covers AMD's PlayStation and Xbox console hardware, Radeon GPUs for PC gaming, and SoC devices that combine Ryzen processing with Radeon graphics. The dramatic decrease in gaming hardware revenue matches Microsoft's recent report stating that Xbox hardware sales decreased by 31% year-over-year”

[Fishy Fingers]

Bro suggesting that AMD total revenue is 100% reliant on xbox?

[purple101]

Ah why don’t you read., READ damit these people these days

Read the thing,

[MrCrimson]

Don't forget Sony. They accounted for 20% of AMDs total revenue in 2021.

[badz149]

So...it was xbox's fault? Gee... thanks Phil!

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

Reasons to buy Nvidia RTX 4000 Series:
- Supports all upscaling techs including DLSS 3.5 (which is simply better in every aspect), FSR3, and XeSS so you never miss out regardless of which one the devs choose to implement
- Frame generation that just works
- Reflex that reduces latency and doesn't get you banned as a bonus
- Ray Tracing performance (and Path Tracing for the brave, adventurous souls)
- Very efficient in power consumption
- Many new games seem to perform faster including ones developed using UE5

Reasons to buy AMD RX 7000 Series:
- VRAM
- Saving $20-$80 except for the 7900XTX (up to $1,000 savings compared to 4090, but then again it's not a 4090...)

[ARESWARLORD]

It's a shame where people won't give AMD Radeon GPUs a chance. I've been running a 6900XT for a few years and it's been an absolute beast. The card does absolutely everything I needed to do and more The drivers are super solid and I'm very happy to own the card.

They make great products people just always seem to put their money down on Nvidia

[CrimsonWing69]

This has been the worst Gen I’ve ever experienced. There was never much incentive to jump into it when it started. Games are still being ported or released on last-gen and in some cases were cheaper on last-gen. I mean, it’s almost over and I can think of only a handful of current-gen titles that were standouts. You weird things like Kill the Justice League that costs more and somehow looks and plays worse Arkham Knight…

Then you have the industry crying about not making profits and how AAA games are “volatile” and what’s their answers? Raise prices…

Like no thanks. You’ve done gone and started ruining the hobby. There’s going to be a hell of a shift in the industry to offset this. I just don’t know if it’s subscription based, lowering dev costs, he’ll lowering game prices, making games that are more AA and Indie (which I’m not a fan of), etc. We can only wait and see, but with the economy and the industry going full ‘tard, it’s no surprises things are selling less and less.