What? A pricing dispute on a GPU from 20 years ago? Why would that be relevant today? If Microsoft were to ask Nvidia to design an APU today I'm sure a new contract would be drawn up and have very little relation to the one back then. Microsoft would likely not though as Nvidia only has access to ARM and not x86. Cost and backwards capability are also major concerns as well.
Sigh... No. I was trying to avoid having to explain this.
The issue 20 years ago is not that there was a pricing dispute, that's just how the issue presented. The issue is Nvidia policies. Eg.
The GPU in the PS5 is basically a 6700XT. A $480 GPU at launch on the PC. AMD would have an APU, which has a CPU and GPU, and sell that APU to Sony or MS only adding a small margin on the on-die cost. So say that 320mm2 APU cost AMD $100? They would sell it to Sony for $110.
Nvidia on the other hand, doesn't operate that way, Nvidia would look at that GPU, look at its PC equivalent, and price the GPU as if they are selling to just any other OEM. So in this case, that would be something like a 2080 super, a $700 GPU. Now while the actual die may cost Nvidia only $120? They would not sell it to Sony/MS for that, they would sell it to them for $250+, which is around what they sell it to their other OEMs. No exceptions. And being that they have the GPU market cornered anyway, especially now, they have even less reason to make any exceptions. Do you go with Nvidia? Well, consoles just get more expensive. That is totally fine by them as they would rather gamers buy their PC GPUs anyway.
That's the problem that is still there today. And that is all before you even start looking at the fact that this would take us back to the pre-PS3 era and would be back to having discrete CPUs and GPUs in consoles...