According to a new blog post today, PlayStation has announced plans to lay off 900 people globally, which amounts to around 8% of the company’s workforce.
PlayStation President and CEO Jim Ryan included a copy of the email sent out to workers today. He mentioned that PlayStation is “focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company” and streamlining resources to meet customer standards.
The email adds that the layoffs will affect employees across all SIE regions.
In the UK, PlayStation plans to close the London Studio “in its entirety”. There will also be reductions at Firesprite studio, and “reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK”.
At the top of the blog, Ryan also issued an additional statement about PlayStation’s decision to lay off 900 employees from its workforce:
“The PlayStation community means everything to us, so I felt it was important to update you on a difficult day at our company. We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8% or about 900 people, subject to local law and consultation processes. Employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted.
These are incredibly talented people who have been part of our success, and we are very grateful for their contributions. However, the industry has changed immensely, and we need to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead. We need to deliver on expectations from developers and gamers and continue to propel future technology in gaming, so we took a step back to ensure we are set up to continue bringing the best gaming experiences to the community.“
Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst mentioned other affected areas in another blog post. The layoffs will also hit “Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, as well as our Technology, Creative, and Support teams”.
Last week, PlayStation also announced plans to begin testing PC support for the PS VR2. The company expects to launch this feature sometime in 2024.
For more of the latest Insider Gaming news, you can read about Skull and Bones pushing players back to Assassin’s Creed Black Flag.
They never should have bought all these studios also isn’t Bungie like 900 people? They should have just shut them down or sold them to Microsoft their games would still be multiplatform and MS would pay.
MS could use Bungie on Halo
I assume this means that all games first party are delayed or cancelled. I guess this is why Bluepoint has shown nothing, Bend has shown nothing, Concord has no gameplay, Insomniac hasn’t officially shown Venom or Wolverine gameplay, Sucker Punch hasn’t shown anything, and the new studios haven shown anything I guess because they were live service. Not to mention they wasted so much developing these games and making acquisitions. My guess Guerilla’s other game SOCOM is cancelled like Factions, Spider-Verse, and Twisted Metal. This makes the show seem more worthless since the game franchise is officially dead again.
Some games might still come out but they’re probably making most of it PS6 launch titles.
They own half of Evo now and Endeavor owns the other half both have had financial problems does this effect the tournament because Evo Japan is like a month or 2 away?
Sony might want to pull the plug on Evo imagine the costs to host the event they have to pay for it all and prize money in some cases travel. Evo hasn’t helped them in any way I don’t know why they don’t shut it down the negative press should have killed it the first time.
The FGC needs to be prepared Sony and Endeavor both are looking at cutting costs and they own EVO. They wouldn’t stop to shut down EVO after Activision shut down their E-Sports division.
I’m surprised they haven’t been shut down or sold off by now Endeavor needs to do something and all the cuts Sony is making every month it seems
Go to CEO and Combo Breakers instead of Evo dies
They never should have bought it to begin it fit neither of their brands and in Sony’s case does nothing because they don’t make fighters if anything it hurt the tournament a bit because certain games can’t be main event anymore like Smash or KI.
E-Sports are not profitable
PlayStation is the only division of Sony that makes money meanwhile it’s also the only division suffering layoffs but Sony Pictures faces no layoffs despite losing money for over a decade? Sony Music too. It’s time Sony sold off Sony Music and Sony Pictures instead of hurting PlayStation.
Sony should sell Sony Pictures off that eliminates all their failures
To all the ponies this means no first party games for a while. At this point games either get held back to PS6 or cancelled all together. Maybe instead of laying people off they shouldn’t give Kojima blank checks!!! Death Stranding didn’t sell well but they gave him money for a sequel and they’re giving him money to make another over budget mess. FairGame$ probably will be cancelled and the Jade Raymond studio shut down. They never should have done these acquisitions! It’s not just PlayStation Sony as a whole went a on a spending spree and lost a ton of money.