Over the weekend Japanese business news wire Nikkei suggested that Sony has deemed its microprocessor production business to costly to maintain as is, and would form a joint venture with Toshiba. Under the rumored terms, Sony would sell its fab facilities to Toshiba for about $863.5 million USD in order to recuperate from losses and better guarantee CPU supplies. Gaming news outlets took note of the article in particular as Sony's Cell processor seen in the PlayStation 3 console clearly falls under the company's CPU production wing. It should be noted that Sony was expected to continue overseeing Cell production as part of the deal, so the Cell itself was not all of a sudden for sale.

However, both Sony and Toshiba have so far denied any such joint venture:

Sony has been exploring ways to streamline its advanced chip business since early this year, Sony spokesman Tomio Takizawa said. However, as for the reported deal, "Nothing has been concretely decided," he said. Takizawa refused to say whether Sony was in talks with Toshiba.

Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori also said Tuesday that nothing has been decided. Toshiba has been working on strengthening its large-scale integrated, or LSI, chips operations, he said. "We are considering various plans, but we cannot comment on individual cases," he said.