Sony and Namco Bandai form Cell-centric company

Sony Computer Entertainment International (SCE) today announced the formation of a new venture in conjunction with Namco Bandai. The goal of the company, called Cellius, will be to develop "new entertainment content" for the Cell Broadband Engine, the parallel processor architecture at the heart of the PlayStation 3.

Namco will invest 51 percent of the funds necessary to start the company, with Sony picking up the remainder. Cellius will be headed up by Namco Bandai's Isao Nakamura, a producer on the publisher's Ridge Racer series of games. Three of the company's directors were also named today, with those chairs going to SCE's Ken Kutaragi and Akira Sato, as well as Namco Bandai's Shin Unosawa.

While the PS3 is the first mass-market entertainment product on the market to use the Cell processor, Sony has said the chip will eventually realize uses far beyond its own console. Today's announcement didn't specify whether or not Cellius' work would be focused on the PS3.

This is not the first time Sony has worked with other company's on the Cell processor. It originally developed the chip in conjunction with IBM and Toshiba, the prime supporter of the HD-DVD format, the high-definition rival to Sony's Blu-ray technology.