Sony lays off 900 PlayStation employees

Sony says it is laying off about 900 employees of its PlayStation division, which is about 8% of the total workforce. The Verge writes about it, UNN reports.

Details

The layoffs will affect various PlayStation studios, including Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Firesprite.

We have made the extremely difficult decision to announce our plan to begin reducing our global headcount by approximately 8 percent, or about 900 people, subject to local laws and consultation

Several PlayStation studios will be affected. In particular, Sony closed its studio in London, which developed games for PlayStation VR. The American studios Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog, as well as the Sony Guerrilla studio based in the Netherlands, are also affected. In general, this will affect employees in North and South America, Japan, as well as EMEA and APAC.

The layoffs came a few days after Sony failed to meet its PS5 sales target, causing the company's stock price to plummet by $10 billion. Although the PS5's prospects were not as Sony expected, analysts also pointed to a nearly ten-year low in gaming profits, indicating that the cost of producing games is eating into Sony's margins in the gaming business.

Sony president Hiroki Totoki also discussed the possibility of developing PlayStation games on PC earlier this month, and it looks like Sony is putting more resources into its PC and mobile efforts.

Context

The gaming industry suffered from waves of layoffs throughout 2023 and this is continuing in 2024. Last month, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox, which is about 8 percent of the entire Microsoft Gaming division. Unity also laid off 25 percent of its workforce last month, and Discord laid off 17 percent of its employees.

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