After it has sold of the Sony Online Entertainment development studio to Columbus Nova, Sony has now decided to shut down all operations at the Japanese Sony Semiconductor Oita Technology Center, the one that was producing Cell and RSX chips for Sony's Playstation 3 console.
After it has sold of the Sony Online Entertainment development studio to Columbus Nova, Sony has now decided to shut down all operations at the Japanese Sony Semiconductor Oita Technology Center, the one that was producing Cell and RSX chips for Sony's Playstation 3 console.

The decision to shut down Oita TEC, based in Kunisaki, Oita Prefecture, Japan, does not come as a big surprise and is most likely the result of decreasing demand for Playstation 3 components. The Oita TEC was originally responsible for memory packaging and was later refocused on the production of advanced packaging for Cell and RSX chips that were behind Sony's Playstation 3 console.

Showing how important its workers are, Sony will not fire a single employee, as all of them will be transfered to other plants that are mostly responsible for production of image sensors and other plants.

In the same press release, Sony noted that it will invest around 105 billion yen (US $805 million) in Nagasaki Tec and Yamagata TEC plans in order to boost the production of CMOS Image Sensors from current 60,000 to around 80,000 wafers per month.

The closer of the Oita TEC is expected to be finalized by the end of March next year.




Source: Wccftech.com.