Microsoft's betrayal of AMD: the apology 20 years later

This year, Xbox celebrates 20 years in the market and Microsoft is preparing many things to celebrate it. However, there has also been an unexpected event and that is that the "creator" of the Xbox s has publicly apologized to AMD for a betrayal of 20 years ago.

Very little will remember the news that emerged after the presentation of the first Xbox there in 2001. And it is that at that time it was known of a betrayal that Microsoft made towards AMD.

This was something that caused a stir at the time and now 20 years later AMD is getting an apology for that fact.

Who has publicly apologized has been Seamus Blackey, the father of the Xbox. He has offered his apologies to Lisa Su, AMD's board of directors, even though she was not part of the company at the time.

Even 20 years later, this was a well-deserved apology for the company after so many months of hard work developing the Xbox only to be betrayed.

What was the betrayal about?

For the first Xbox, this should have an AMD chip, and it is that for months, its engineers worked on the prototype of this console. And this in order to achieve the highest possible performance. The work was such that AMD was sure that the console would carry its chip.

However, when the Xbox was announced it became known that it would actually include an Intel chip.

Of course, AMD was not aware of this move by Microsoft and which they considered an unfair move.

The event was attended by AMD engineers, and they were sitting in the front row waiting for the announcement of this console that would carry their CPU. However, they were surprised to learn that Microsoft had put them aside after months of work.

Why did Microsoft sideline AMD at the last minute?

This is the question we all ask ourselves, yet 20 years later, we still don't have an answer.

The truth is that no details of this have been given and even Seamus Blackey does not know details of what it was that led the company to make that decision.

Most likely it was some secret business deal between Microsoft and Intel. In any case, we will probably never know what happened that day and why it was done that way.

Still, AMD has no grudges against Microsoft

After what we could consider as a "dirty move", many would hope that the relationship between these two companies was not the best. However, this is not so.

If we look at the specifications of the latest Microsoft consoles, we will realize that they are powered by an AMD chip. Same CPU that Sony consoles also integrate. And is that for years, AMD has perfected its CPUs for video games making them the best on the market.