AMD's revenue drops 2% in 2013, but shows income and gross margin improvements

AMD's fourth quarter and yearly 2013 financial numbers have now been released, pointing at a general improvement over previous years. Although the company's revenue dropped by 2%, its gross margin and operating income are up quite significantly over the previous year.

The company posted $83 million in net income losses, which is actually a vast improvement over its $1.18 billion loss in 2012. Both a rise in gross margin by 14% and a booming Graphics and Visual Solutions group are likely the reasons the company is closing the losses gap. While the Computing Solutions group suffered a 22% dip last year in revenue, the Graphics and Visual Solutions group (responsible for PS4 and Xbox One chips) posted a 55% hike in revenue from $1.4 to $2.2 billion in 2012. AMD CEO Rory Read attributes the company's strong Q4 2013 results to the console SoCs and its other leading graphics solutions.

And a strong fourth quarter it was, the company posted $89 million in profit as well as improvements across the board including better income, revenue and gross margin numbers.

As for projections, the company sees revenue dropping about 16% sequentially (give or take 3%) in the first quarter of 2014. AMD locked in about $1.1 billion in revenue during Q1 2013, so even a significant dip of around 18 or 19% would still leave the company on top of last year's Q1 numbers.

'mso-b� = a k �� 8�� 54'>A version of the game for PC has been rumored for quite some time. Last October, multiple industry sources told Eurogamer that the hit title would arrive on the PC during the first quarter of 2014. What’s more, an Nvidia executive accidentally mentioned the game during an investor call and Intel said they didn’t expect the title to remain a console exclusive for very long.

But perhaps the most damning evidence arrived last week with the discovery of 150-page bug log purported to be from the PC version of the game. The log dated back to April 2009 with references to a PC version starting around June 2012. It contains multiple references to 32- and 64-bit versions of the game as well as DirectX 11 smog and more.

Thus far, Rockstar has remained silent on the matter but if past releases are any indication, there’s reason for hope. Every console exclusive game in the series since GTA III has eventually found its way to the PC so there’s little reason why the same won’t happen here. The only question really is, when will it happen, and furthermore, will we ultimately see versions launched on Microsoft and Sony’s next generation consoles?