| shikamaru317 said: They would lose backwards compatibility if they ditched AMD. |
Not necesarily, though it would make retaining backwards compatibility a massive pain, with only 2 real options:
1) Emulation. Admittedly this is really only theoretical, as it takes a ton of computing power and no matter the increase in computer power in Gen 10 I am not sure if they'll be able to emulate a full PS5/Xbox Series. But given how the Xbox One was able to emulate a 360 for certain games; it is not inconcievable I suppose.
2) Including an AMD x86 processor inside the console for backwards compatibility purposes. This was done by the early models of PS3 if I am not mistaken, which included a full PS2 CPU; as well as by the GBA and DS? This would make backwards compatibility trivial, but it would also increase the prices of next gen consoles.
Option 2 also has the advantage of theoretically increasing performance (as the old PS5/Series X chip would act as a coprocessor), but a the cost of making games hard to program.
Though I am not a computer scientist so this is all from the armchair :P
