While everyone can see that Nintendo is making money hand over fist thanks to amazing sales of the DS Lite and the Wii, some of the console maker’s partners are also riding the wave.
One such partner is AMD, which has one of its ATI graphics chip inside every Wii. AMD today announced that it the 50 millionth ATI ‘Hollywood’ chip (the GPU for the Wii) from Nintendo shipped today.
“Nintendo values its ongoing relationship with AMD. AMD’s graphics technology expertise as displayed in the ATI ‘Hollywood’ chip is a great part of the momentum of Wii. Our combined efforts help deliver entertaining experiences to create many smiling faces in living rooms around the world,” said Genyo Takeda, general manager of Integrated Research and Development, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
“We’re proud to provide the ATI ‘Hollywood’ chip as the cool and quiet graphics engine that factors so prominently in the overall enjoyment for Wii owners,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “AMD counts Nintendo as a valued customer and we continue to work together to make console entertainment a growing phenomenon worldwide.”
With 50 million units delivered, the ATI ‘Hollywood’ becomes the most successful AMD game console chip to date in terms of unit sales. ATI supplied the graphics chips for the Nintendo GameCube, and is still producing the ‘Xenos’ GPU for the Xbox 360.
Last month we reported on a rumor that had Intel producing the graphics technology for the next generation PlayStation. With AMD already having what we assume to be a positive relationship with Microsoft and Nintendo, Nvidia could be the one left out in the next round of consoles. Industry insiders, however, don’t foresee any new consoles hitting the market until 2011 or 2012.
