Sony has announced that it will lay off approximately 8% of its PlayStation division. These layoffs will affect various PlayStation studios such as Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games and Firesprite.
Sony is laying off 900 PlayStation employees
The closure of the London Studio, one of Sony’s PlayStation studios, was also announced as part of the layoffs. This studio was known as the developer of PlayStation VR games.
There will also be layoffs affecting Firesprite, the UK studio behind PlayStation VR’s Horizon Call of the Mountain. Last week, Sony announced that it was working on PSVR 2 support for PC.
Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, said that US-based studios will be affected, as well as studios such as the Netherlands-based Guerrilla studio. In general, employees in the Americas, Japan and the EMEA and APAC regions will be affected.
In an email to PlayStation employees, Jim Ryan said, “After several months of careful consideration and many leadership conversations, it is clear that changes need to be made. We have decided that we need to move forward with a focus on the long-term sustainability of the company and the best experiences we can offer our community.”
These layoffs, which occurred after Sony missed its PS5 sales target, caused the company’s share price to fall by 10 billion dollars.
Sony President Hiroki Totoki spoke earlier this month about the opportunity to publish PlayStation games on PC, and it looks like Sony will put more resources into its PC and mobile efforts. “Delivering social and online experiences – allowing PlayStation players to explore our worlds in different ways – but also bringing games to additional devices like PC and Mobile requires a different approach and different resources,” Hulst said.
The gaming industry has recently faced a wave of layoffs, and 2023’s games have been marred by a wave of layoffs. Microsoft laid off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees a few months ago, about 8% of the employees across the entire Microsoft Gaming division. Unity also laid off 25% of its employees a month ago, and Discord laid off 17% of its employees.
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