I am well aware that AMD graphics outperform Intel's HD but Intel cpu waaayy outperform AMD.

Intel also has a manufacturing advantage over AMD.

Would PS4/XB1 be better off w/ a highly custom dual core Haswell w/beefed up HD graphics to AMD? Haswell has AVX2, AMD has HSA. intel is at 22nm w/trigate.

a dual core lower power Haswell with Iris Pro Graphics 5200 with on-die DRAM vs amd

Intel can make better margins for their chips elsewhere. AMD does not have such good market share on the desktop so needs to offer bulk commercial supplies like this and they're not going to make much of a margin on them. This is especially the case because of current energy efficiency drives. Intel leads on this and AMD trails but for the games console market energy efficiency is not so important for buyers as it is in desktop computing. A console maker therefore won't mind about buying inefficient chips cheaply en masse.

The graphics part probably means too much for the consoles and Intel still can't really compete for games, while power consumption isn't very important at all. Apart from that Intel may well be a lot harder to bargain with as far as custom design goes, so they would probably have ended up with a separate graphics chip anyway. Today they simply can't sell machines at such high initial loss as they used to with say the PS3, so production cost is as important as ever.

ok well i guess ps5 and xbox2 might have skymount and bc

1) Haswell wasn't available when MS and Sony spec'ed the consoles.

2) Intel is too expensive. Rumors around the industry (mostly from nVidia) claim pretty low profit margins for AMD and it's highly doubtful Intel would even bother. This generation of consoles seems to be aiming to be profitable from the get-go. Both vendors learned the painful lesson that subsidizing expensive hardware is a risky business model.

3) Intel will not guarantee shipments for such low profit chips. They are already shipping 90% of all PC/Mac CPUs. AMD isn't manufacturing anymore, so I presume Sony and MS can approach any foundry they need to make the chips. Intel would never allow that with its intellectual property. And even if, nobody outside of Intel has the foundries to build them anyway.

4) The PS4/Xbox One don't use retail APUs. They include graphics that are a fair bit more powerful than what we can presently buy and a lot more powerful than what Intel has to offer. In my opinion, they are underpowered as it is - shipping midrange graphics on a console that might be around 7-8 years is rubbish! - but if they went with Intel, they'd be competing with Nintendo.

ok

what about the choice of a very weak atom-level 8-core bobcat like CPU rather than say a dual or quad phenom-level core?