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Xbox's Phil Spencer takes the stage at AMD's CES 2019 keynote

The Xbox frontman took the time to speak about the Xbox Division's partnership with AMD and goals for the future during the AMD CES 2019 keynote presentation.

Chris Jarrard

January 9, 2019 12:55 PM

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While most of the pre-show buzz surrounding AMD’s CES 2019 keynote surround the rumored unveiling of 7nm GPUs and the next generation of Ryzen CPUs, the company had a bit of surprise for those in attendance when they invited Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer up to talk about the partnership between the companies and what it meant moving forward.

Spencer’s appearances turned some heads as rumors have been swirling for months that AMD may be providing the hardware platform for the successor to Microsoft’s Xbox One console. Spencer spoke a bit about how working with AMD resulted in the advancements offered by the Xbox One X console as well as the future of cloud-powered gaming.

When we saw Spencer at E3 2018, he confirmed that development had already begun on the next generation Xbox console. The Xbox One, as well as the PS4, were powered by a custom CPU and graphics solution made by AMD that was based on its Jaguar core architecture. Industry pundits have speculated that AMD products would be powering the upcoming generation of consoles if either of the console giants wanted relatively easy backwards compatibility with the current generation of software.

While Spencer did not directly address the next generation Xbox product during the AMD keynote, he did speak vaguely about working with AMD on upcoming projects.

“As we look forward to future platforms that we’re building and work that we’re doing, the partnership and the innovations that we’ve seen in the past have led to what we’ve been able to do today, I think they’re going to be critically important to our future endeavors. I’m really looking forward to showing those to people more in the future.”

AMD took the wraps off its new 7nm CPUs and GPUs during the keynote and it would not be a big surprise if this technology was at the heart of the new consoles in some form. Stay tuned to Shacknews for more news on the upcoming generation of console hardware as it develops.

Chris Jarrard

Contributing Tech Editor

Chris Jarrard likes playing games, crankin' tunes, and looking for fights on obscure online message boards. He understands that breakfast food is the only true food. Don't @ him.