Intel tried to become Sony's chip manufacturer for the PlayStation 6, but ended up losing the contract to longtime Sony partner AMD, a new report from Reuters suggests. Citing sources with knowledge of the matter, Reuters wrote that Intel's internal projections estimated the PS6 contract to be worth about $30 billion USD for the company over the course of its runtime.

Sony eventually decided to stick with AMD due to its longtime partner offering the better deal as well as making it easier to ensure backward compatibility with previous PlayStation consoles. According to the report, Intel and Sony had discussions around this topic at a high level, which made it obvious that switching chip manufacturers would put backward compatibility at risk.

An Intel spokesperson commented on the report with the following: "We strongly disagree with this characterization but are not going to comment about any current or potential customer conversations. We have a very healthy customer pipeline across both our product and foundry business, and we are squarely focused on innovating to meet their needs."

Reuters did not receive reactions from any of the other companies involved in the bidding war that reportedly took place in 2022.

The PS6 has not officially been announced by Sony, which only recently revealed the PS5 Pro - a refresh of 2020's PS5 bringing marginal upgrades to the system for a price tag not everyone is happy with.

The next console generation is expected to land on the shelves in 2028, at least going by some leaked documents from Xbox. Sony and Microsoft have generally been in step when it comes to launching their new machines, so this is a solid time window to keep an eye on for both.