The big picture: Discussions about the competition between Nvidia and AMD usually identify Team Green as the more successful of the two giants in PC gaming graphics. However, the distance between them changes depending on which businesses you focus on, because no company sells only GPUs.
An examination of Q4 2022 financials from Nvidia and AMD reveals that despite Team Green’s perceived significant lead, Team Red is only 11 percent behind in total gaming revenue. Nvidia took a harder hit in that sector than AMD.
Both companies recently published year-end 2022 reports that showed similar fourth-quarter gaming revenue. While Team Green’s revenue in that sector took a 46 percent year-over-year hit to $1.8 billion, Team Red’s fell just seven percent to $1.6 billion.
The overall financial year shows a more significant difference between the two companies. Interestingly, the revenue in the gaming sector moved in the opposite direction by almost the same percentage. Nvidia made $9 billion in gaming by 2022, while AMD took in $6.8 billion. However, the former suffered a 27 percent decrease compared to 2021, while the latter grew 21 percent.
These numbers are closer than the figure from Steam’s hardware survey, which has Team Green at 75 percent of the GPU market. However, PC graphics only tell part of the story.
Nvidia counts its GeForce NOW cloud gaming service in gaming revenues, but the real missing piece of the picture is console shipments. Team Red provides the silicon behind Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series consoles, while Nvidia only provides the Nintendo Switch.
The recently released financials show that, while Nintendo sold more consoles in the nine months of 2022 – 14.91 million to Sony’s 12.8 million – the NPD Group reported that PlayStation 5 hardware sales generated more revenue in the North America because of its higher prices.
Microsoft didn’t report exact Xbox console numbers, so it’s unclear how much it contributed to AMD’s bottom line. However, analysts peg the Xbox Series X and S at 17 million units in their lifetime, while Sony and Nintendo have their machines at 32 million and 122 million, respectively.
A global economic slowdown has affected various technology sectors throughout 2022, including PCs and PC parts, but analysts expect things to pick up in the second half of 2023. That’s when when PC GPU rivals release their latest mid-range cards, which may be the most important members of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4000 series and AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series.