On Saturday, Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp said it intends to close its system LSI chip plant in Northern Japan. Renesas made chips for the Wii game consoles of Nintendo Co Ltd and other clients from the electronics industry. Sources with knowledge of the matter said the decision transpired following the company's failure to look for the facility's buyer.

Renesas would restructure its business so that it could focus on producing automotive electronics' microcontrollers. Renesas currently holds the most global market share for microcontroller. However, the sources gave no estimates regarding the cost of the company's shutdown.

Many chip makers in Japan struggled especially when consumers started playing games with their smarphones and tablets instead of game consoles. Renesas was supposed to gain JPY150 billion equivalent to US$1.53 billion investment by the end of September. The money would come from the state-owned Innovation Network Corporation. The company refused to join a planned merger of its system LSI unit with Panasonic Corp and Fujitsu Ltd that aimed to create a Japanese national champion in the industry.