Sony may sell game chip facility to Toshiba: sources

REUTERS UK wrote:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) is in talks to sell its production facilities for advanced microchips used in its PlayStation 3 game console to Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research), sources close to the matter said.

The sale, which would include production lines for the "Cell" microchips, dubbed "supercomputer on a chip," is part of Sony's strategy to shed costly semiconductor assets and focus on the production of strategic products such as image sensor chips used in digital cameras and camcorders, they said.

The business daily Nikkei said on Saturday Sony planned to sell production facilities for cutting-edge microprocessors and graphic chips to Toshiba for about 100 billion yen ($869.7 million) and an agreement is likely within a few months.

Both Sony and Toshiba declined to comment on the report.

To secure a stable supply of chips for its game machines after the possible sale, Sony is considering to set up a joint venture with Toshiba to take over actual production activities at the manufacturing facilities, the sources said.

Sony, which is in the final year of its three-year turnaround plan under Chief Executive Howard Stringer, said in February it will cut back on future chip spending and may not produce next-generation microchips using 45-nanometre circuitry in-house.

Source:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKT10757920070915

ooo wow!, well if they stay in the game but partner toshi.... i can see a very bright future for sony..

i thought they would be just packing up and selling it all on.

and if they just cut thier losses and leave it up to toshi after selling up!

what will toshi do with it?? its very exciting lol.

this is as scary as ever to purchase a ps3.

Drazhar wrote:

ooo wow!, well if they stay in the game but partner toshi.... i can see a very bright future for sony..

i thought they would be just packing up and selling it all on.

Actually, IBM and Toshiba both already have put in there part into the "Cell", and for them to sell Sony's rights to the chip sounds like a "lack of sales abandon ship" thing to me. Making them in-house is cheaper as long as the sales are there to support it, and ONLY applicable if the sales are there to support it. Needless to say, sounds to me that Toshiba and Sony both are thinking it would be in better hands with Toshiba.

Hard to say really, however this doesn't look good for Sony. It looks like they are dropping a vast number of "poor sales" chips in there arsenal, cleaning house so to speak, and sticking to what they are good at - cameras.

I don't see this changing there product line, but it does change what we should expect from Sony in the future I would believe. We shall see.

bring sega back on board... im to excited about this... (no offense sony) "cough cough"

Drazhar wrote:

what will toshi do with it?? its very exciting lol.

It's a very exciting subject, as Toshiba may bring the Cell to the platform where it belongs....the computer.

(Something I STILL believe that Sony should have done with there PS3 in the first place, make it it's own brand of personal computer.)

Drazhar wrote:

this is as scary as ever to purchase a ps3.

Yes, but I don't see the PS# "obsolete" because of it, however I don't see a PS4 in the future, and see the PlayStation line-up sticking to stereo-typical trilogy style release.

(First is awesome, the Second is sometimes better, and the Third has a habit of being a complete disappointment....)

Drazhar wrote:

bring sega back on board... im to excited about this... (no offense sony) "cough cough"

ha ha! I don't think you are alone in that thought!

KrisKhaos wrote:

Yes, but I don't see the PS# "obsolete" because of it, however I don't see a PS4 in the future, and see the PlayStation line-up sticking to stereo-typical trilogy style release.

(First is awesome, the Second is sometimes better, and the Third has a habit of being a complete disappointment....)

do you think now that square will change their mind about FF.. and now bring it out on xbox?

i think they would be crazy to ignore the Idea...

Drazhar wrote:

do you think now that square will change their mind about FF.. and now bring it out on xbox?

i think they would be crazy to ignore the Idea...

They might, then again I thought they was crazy to go exclusive for the PS3 in the first place. I can understand that the best place to capture the Japanese audience with the high-end graphics is still the PS3 (in Japan for now at least), but in the U.S. (and world-wide) the best means to deploy high-end graphics to a wide audience is clearly the 360.

I still don't think FF is going to save Sony in the States, but I do think it will boost it up a million or two in sales counts at best. We shall see, maybe FF and Sony will surprise us?

im going to own ff13 whatever system its on.... i am just scared of owning a ps3 lol... so if it comes to xbox.. all is good.