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It's felt like Intel has been fighting an uphill battle for the last two years. It's faced instability issues that resulted in a PR crisis, it has enforced mass layoffs on more than one occasion, its long-awaited Arrow Lake processors didn't exactly restore good faith, and as if all of that trouble wasn't enough, its biggest rival, AMD, has been sweeping up all the glory in the gaming PC market. In a rather strange turn, news arrived this week that Intel has just handed over a 10% stake in itself to the US government.
No matter which way you look at this, it's weird, weird, dawn-of-cyberpunk times for a big tech company like Intel to be so closely tied to the Trump administration. Stock levels falling after the 9.9% deal was announced will tell you I'm not the only one taken aback. Amidst the burning room it's sitting in, however, Intel is saying "this is fine" and pointing gamers at a big shiny distraction. As a part of the Intel Gamer Days sale, you can get Battlefield 6 bundled in with any of Intel's most recent gaming processors if you purchase one between now and September 7.
There's nothing worse for a brand's reputation than a slow drip-feed of bad news, and that's exactly what Intel has had over the last few years. You do have to admire its consumer wing carrying on like everything is perfectly normal, however, and pulling out a bundled deal that is genuinely going to be of interest to a lot of gamers. A move like this is hardly going to restore faith with people who have been following the news, and I doubt it'll do much to combat falling share prices, but hey, "Battlefield 6 for free" is an alluring concept.
For those who have been out of the loop, Intel has been receiving money from the US government for a while now. First introduced by the Biden administration, the Chips Act was put in place mainly to help these large chip manufacturers like Intel, Micron, and others produce their parts in the US, and prevent as many supply chain shortages as we saw during the global pandemic.
Trump's administration has been mostly critical of this act since coming into his second term, but Trump himself has now changed his tune, saying that if the US government is going to grant subsidies to these companies, the taxpayer should see a return on that investment.
That was at the start of the week, and since announcing that his government was going to seek a stake in Intel, the sale has now gone through. Interestingly, this sale may not even be legal, since apparently, cash from these subsidies was used in the purchase.
It's unlikely that for a company so big, the announcement of a Battlefield 6 bundle was at all coordinated. This has likely been in the works for a little while on the consumer side, and it just so happens that things in the C-suite have moved quicker than anyone expected. Still, what a way to misdirect one of your largest audience segments during a massive change in share holdings.
In total fairness, I do think this is a pretty good promotion that gamers should make the most of, despite all the larger Intel news this week. The range on offer is pretty impressive, and spans most of the Raptor Lake refresh products, as well as the Arrow Lake products like the Intel Core Ultra 7.
That said, I'd also issue a word of caution. We have no idea how Intel or the government plans on using this new partnership going forward, so whether you're team AMD or Intel, I'd try and keep up with the news from here on in.
- Shop the whole Battlefield 6 bundle
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 pre-order: $69.99 at Amazon
- AMD's best CPU: $359 at Amazon
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