Sony plans to sell PS3 chip production facilities to Toshiba

[wraggster]

via engadget

Sony may be planning to sell its chip production facilities to Toshiba for $865 million, if reports by the AP and Reuters are to be believed. The production facilities will include the lines that manufacture the PlayStation 3's Cell chip, and may or may not include the manufacturing of image sensors, depending on whether you believe Reuters or the AP's report. After the sale, Sony will probably continue to purchase chips from the facilities, with the company's game unit possibly also taking a stake in exchange for some kind of operational control. The deal isn't expected to go down for a few months yet, so even if there any problems in the handover, the PS3's production shouldn't see any short term issues. Sony and Toshiba have already responded to these reports, but managed to neither confirm nor deny their veracity to Japanese publication ITMedia.

[VexnadFett]

hahah! business! isn't Toshiba the main company behind HD-dvd? haha maybe they'll sabotage the ps3 chip so that .... well you get the idea

[DCergo]

Sony and Toshiba have a long standing business relationship and to suggest they might sabotage anything is quite ludicrous. You'll find unlikely alliances elsewhere too, such as Sony and Microsoft in the OS desktop/laptop markets.

Toshiba not only helped design and manufacture the PS2 chips sony used, they are also one of three main companies behind the creation of the Cell chip (IBM/Toshiba/Sony are partners in the endeavor).

Sony at this point doesn't really need to own and maintain the Cell chip lines, just buy them as needed, and it probably is a very good idea to just sell off it's production lines to Toshiba, and make a comfortable sum of money which they can divert to help make the PS3 even cheaper, or fund new software, etc.

[Elven6]

Ha they sell it to Toshiba so they won't have the money to make Warner switch sides, then they switch chip production making the factories useless, forcing Toshiba to back out of the format war leading to HD DVD's demise!

Don't do it! Unless you bind Sony into using the factory for a few years.

[VexnadFett]

thanks for the info Dcergo... that was helpful... it just sounds like the divisions of companies are almost companies themselves... like since Sony is the driving force behind bluray and Toshiba is the force behind HDdvd... well if the two companies truly had close binds they surely wouldn't be in this position... just what i would think...