The news came buried in AMD’s Q2 earnings call, where the outfit bragged about a 71.4 per cent surge in its Client and Gaming segment. Ryzen CPU sales hit $2.5 billion, up 66 per cent, and gaming revenue hit $1.1 billion, up a whopping 83.3 per cent. Most of that came from flogging Radeon GPUs and shovelling custom SoCs into consoles and portable tat.

AMD confirmed it’s working with Microsoft on a new multi-platform custom chip, which will power the next Xbox, a new wave of gaming handhelds, and even a few pre-built and laptop PCs. Vole wants to unify the whole Xbox ecosystem under a single chip design, perhaps because choice and upgradeability are out of fashion.

AMD’s console-like SoCs for PC have been glorified APUs. The Ryzen Z2 powers the Xbox-branded ROG Ally handheld, and the Xbox Series X/S use the same x86 Zen CPU and RDNA GPU stuff you find in AMD desktops. Now the plan is to go full circle and bring that exact silicon to regular PCs.

The idea is to give gamers a one-chip solution that delivers consistent performance across consoles, laptops, mini PCs, and handhelds. Most of these SoCs will be soldered straight to the motherboard, killing any chance of future upgrades. Fine for handhelds and laptops, but a dead-end for desktop users who like to swap out parts.

Microsoft is  said to be revamping Windows to better bridge the console and PC divide, which could mean porting some of those long-teased console optimisations to the PC crowd.

Whether this leads to streamlined performance or another locked-down ecosystem is anyone’s guess. But it’s clear AMD and Microsoft want to blur the lines between consoles and PCs, even if they have to weld your chips in place to do it.