Have you heard? NVIDIA has bought Xbox! At least, that’s the rumour going around, but is there any truth in it? If you’re wondering whether NVIDIA did indeed buy Microsoft’s console business, here’s the truth of the matter.
Did NVIDIA Buy Xbox?
The answer is no, NVIDIA has not bought Xbox. The rumour went around the internet starting from April 1 and appears to have started as an April Fool’s joke. As reported by PureXbox, it began with a prank over at Tweaktown, with the headline, “NVIDIA buys Xbox brand from Microsoft: next-gen Xbox has dual GPUs, AI to fight PlayStation 6”.
Tweaktown did publish the story on Facebook where, of those who commented, about two-thirds figured out it was a joke. They didn’t tweet the story out, but a lot of Twitter/X users started quoting it as fact without linking the story. Some of those tweets got retweeted and, well you get the picture. As Mark Twain didn’t say, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Could NVIDIA Buy Xbox?
According to Google’s market summary, NVIDIA is worth 2.26 trillion US dollars, less than the 3.15 trillion Microsoft is worth. There’s no specific figure for Microsoft’s Xbox division, but NVIDIA probably has the capital to purchase Xbox. The snag is that NVIDIA is not necessarily equipped to start making consoles.
Microsoft and Sony are almost certainly working on their next generation of consoles, but both the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S use AMD chips. Microsoft did use NVIDIA chips for its very first console generation, though it switched to ATI (which was later acquired by AMD) for the Xbox 360 and has stuck with AMD ever since. As such, it would be quite a leap for NVIDIA to suddenly get in the console game.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that when it comes to consoles, the hardware itself is generally sold at or close to a loss, and the profit comes from software, accessories, subscriptions, and so forth. Right now, there’s no compelling reason for NVIDIA to get into the console business, even if Microsoft was looking to sell.
So the answer to whether NVIDIA bought Xbox is no, it was an April Fool’s joke that travelled.
