It’s another dark day for the gaming industry as there is more news . This time his it destroys his studios. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) it is laying off about 900 employees from its PlayStation division, about 8 percent of the department’s workforce.
Insomniac (Spider-Man and Ratchet and Clank), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us), and Guerrilla (Horizon) are affected by cuts. These studios are behind some of PlayStation’s most important franchises. For example, for three and a half months Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 It sold 10 million units.
London Studio working on Sony It’s shutting down completely for PlayStation 5, while Firesprite will lose some employees. In addition, PlayStation will lay off employees from its Technology, Creative and Support teams.
PlayStation employees who lost their jobs in the US will be notified today. Sony will follow local laws and regulations to implement layoffs in other areas — the company says people in all its global regions will be affected.
“After careful review and many leadership discussions over several months, it became clear that changes needed to be made to continue growing the business and developing the company.” Jim Ryan told staff in an email. “We had to step back, take a holistic look at our business and move forward with a focus on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best possible experiences for our community. The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver the experiences players and creators expect from us.”
Meanwhile, Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, said that SIE management has evaluated its studios and portfolio and looked at projects at different stages of development. Some of those projects have now been cancelled. Hulst did not provide further details, but the canned projects undoubtedly include projects that London Studios is working on.
“I want to be clear that the decision to stop working on these projects does not reflect the talent or passion of the team members,” Hulst said. he wrote in a memo. “Our philosophy has always been to allow for creative experimentation. Sometimes great ideas don’t translate into great games. Sometimes, a project is started with the best of intentions until changes within the market or industry result in a change of plan.”
Hulst also noted that SIE is reassessing the approach of delivering the kind of expensive blockbuster single-player games that PlayStation has been known for over the past decade, balancing that with a desire to create long-tail multiplayer games. Hulst wrote: “Delivering the immersive, narrative-driven stories that PlayStation Studios is known for at the bar of quality we crave requires a re-evaluation of how we operate.” “Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences – enabling PlayStation players to explore our worlds in a variety of ways, as well as launch games on additional devices and mobile require a different approach and different resources.”
Sony does many live service games and planned to release 10 of them by 2026. At least one of them — – was on the shelf. However, the company has seen some success on the live service front becoming one of the biggest hits of the year so far.
However, he That said, Sony doesn’t plan to release any sequels to major first-party franchises until at least April next year. based on third-party titles such as and to help cover gaps in its pipeline. The company too For the current fiscal year ending March 31. It expects to sell 21 million consoles in fiscal 2023, up from a previous estimate of 25 million.
This layoff schedule brings the total number of job losses in the gaming industry to over 7,000 so far this year (we’re not even into March yet). That’s on top of more than 9,000 people laid off from the industry in 2023.
Microsoft made serious cuts in its gaming division in January. . , , (adjacent to games instead of game company), , Dead in daylight developer and among those who implemented the reduction.
