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Key Console Player Leaves AMD For Nvidia

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The next XBox and PlayStation haven’t even been unveiled yet, but the man who put AMD's technology into both gaming consoles has already left the troubled chip designer for rival Nvidia.

AMD Vice President of Strategic Development Bob Feldstein began work at Nvidia on Monday, July 16 after leaving AMD Friday, July 13, the Wall Street Journal first reported Tuesday.

Feldstein joined AMD when it acquired graphics chip specialist ATI in 2006. While at AMD he led a Boston-based group at the company that put AMD’s graphics processors in the XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

Feldstein’s group has also locked up a spot in the next generation XBox and PlayStation, which have yet to be unveiled; as well as Nintendo’s next-generation Wii U, which was first unveiled last year. The work with Sony is known inside AMD as ‘Project Thebes.’

AMD has seen a wave of turnover since the departure of Chief Executive Dirk Meyer in January 2011. The company laid off 1,400 employees in November, including John Bruno, a well-regarded chip designer who began work at Apple this month. In February, Eric Demers, the chief technology officer for AMD’s graphics business, left for San Diego-based mobile chip designer Qualcomm.

In a statement, Nvidia said Feldstein will help Nvidia “think through current and possible future technology licensing projects.”

While Feldstein’s talents could be useful should Nvidia choose to pursue the gaming console market, he could also help Nvidia position itself for a shift away from consoles even as Microsoft and Sony are quietly preparing a new generation of consoles.

A number of services such as Sony’s Gaikai, G-Cluster, OnLive, Playcast, and Ubitus already promise to replace expensive consoles with services that stream games from powerful servers.

And in May Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang those showed off a new technology Nvidia calls ‘GeForce GRID,’ that will allow companies offering hosted gaming services on their servers to support more gamers using less hardware.

“The entire gaming industry is ripe for upheaval," said Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights & Strategy. "The end users are being programmed for free to play plus add ons, you have devices like phones and tablets that are being updated annually, compared to a seven year cycle with consoles, added to a gaming industry who is preparing itself for free to play -- that breaks the current console model."