PlayStation Follows Xbox In Announcing Significant Layoffs For 2024

Terrible period if you work in the industry over the last 12-18months or so.

Hopefully those affected can get back on their feet soon. Potentially even enough talent out there to get something sorted and ideas going amongst them!

Everyone let go from all companies should combine to create a new studio

@Romans12

Here come the fanboys already.

Anyway this year has been a total disaster and we're not even in March. I'm sure we'll get great games from all three camps but this year is just the worst.

@Romans12 layoffs are bad for the industry period. Don't try to excuse what happened over at Microsoft's side.

@ChopstickPhilly

Nah, the evil Sony is totally broke so that's all that matters. Ignore this being an industry wide thing to fuel fanboyism.

@Romans12 Lol yeh always funny when people lose their job and might I add, some expertly delivered, non-biased industry critique you have offered up there. LMAO. MEGA ROFL!

The days of riding around the office on a Sony branded scooter are over for these folks.

I suppose that means that the Playstation division must have made a loss in 2023 then.

So will the FTC look at Sony of America for this layoffs too? Or do they only care what Microsoft does?

@ZuneTattooGuy Great point. A couple things caught my eye though from your comment. From the article: "Those 900 jobs amount to roughly 8% of PlayStation's current workforce; across all Sony Interactive Entertainment regions. The UK makes for particularly bad reading - PlayStation's London Studio will "close in its entirety" as part of these layoffs."
I'm not saying America isn't effected but it seems as though America may have survived most of the cuts, also it's the FTC not the FCC.
Perhaps the FTC isn't getting involved because America may have mostly been spared out of the 900. Microsoft's 1900 I believe was mostly America.

@ZuneTattooGuy Did Sony buy one of the largest publishers in history? No…

Also don’t compare Sony acquisitions with Microsoft acquisitions (max €3.7 billion vs €68.7 billion). They are in a total different ballpark.

Microsoft is in the position to get a monopoly in videogaming Industry purely based on the amount of spending power they have. Sony is a dirt poor compared to Microsoft in terms of liquidity.

@Sanquine @TwoDents considering the state of the industry in terms of layoffs at supermassive games and embracer on top of msft and Sony I'm somewhat on board with msft saying the Activision layoffs were going to happend whether they bought them or not. Activision were getting dragged through the mud pre acquisition anyway.

Definitely not the same situation between msft and Sony. Msft spent a looooooot and made promises but on the other end of the spectrum Sony's console division is in a much better position no?

I hope the folks at London Studio, Firesprite, Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerilla (and anyone else effected that we do not know about) land on their feet quickly in this difficult time.

But it was expected after their last financial results, sadly the writing was on the wall.

Best of luck to everyone effected and thank you for the gaming memories.

@Kierant202 Most of the layoffs at Activision Blizzard were due to synergies (e.g. cost cutting on staff functions that are double). That’s different than Sony who had severely lower margins in FY23 (all resulting from development cost being so high and increasing).

@Sakai This! Sony shares dropped very hard due to decreasing gross margins. I think direct labour cost due to the amount of development time is really pushing margins down. Also the amount of marketing spending for games is absurd.

This is very sad news. My heart goes out to all those that were affected by this. This isn’t a Sony vs Microsoft thing that some are making this out to be. It’s sad when it happens on either side. It’s sad when it happens to other businesses in the industry. It’s people’s livelihood that it’s affecting.

sorry to hear for the people who lost their job. Also, psvr2 was obviously a big waste of money for me.

@Sanquine I don't have a link but it was reported (e.g., Triple Click podcast) that a Blizzard "survival" game was canceled and the entire team let go rather than reassigned to a new project. I think the narrative that the cuts were duplicate positions is corporate BS. Obviously, I have no transparency, but the number of cuts doesn't seem like redundant positions. Even the oft cited marketing and HR positions do not make sense to me. Unless MS had an army of people sitting on their thumbs, I find it hard to believe they simply take up all the new work at ActiBlizz. But no matter the reasons, it is awful for those cut, always sorry to hear

And sorry to hear about more layoffs across the industry at Sony and the other recent announcements. So many... : (

@Sanquine
Just because Sony's other divisions are bleeding them of money and they constantly make bad business decisions doesn't mean they should be looked into less than Microsoft

@Reptilio
PlayStation VR2 and PS5 both seem to be taking a nap this entire year according to Sony themselves nothing major is being released in 2024

@ZuneTattooGuy

Sony said no first party existing IPs, it doesn't mean that there won't be first party games.

Also even without first party, I already have 4 console exclusives at the start of the year that I really want on PS5.

@ZuneTattooGuy I thought the reason for "looking into it" was that MS stated they were maintaining the acquisitions as independent companies (and FTC wanted this in the fantastical, wishful thinking on their part, scenario that the decision is reversed and they could unwind the deal), but then MS gave rationale for cuts as reducing redundancy, in direct contradiction.

Personally, I wish FTC would drop it at this point, seems like a waste of effort. But just commenting that it seems like a pretty different situation

As an aside, I wish there was some way to hold the execs accountable at all the companies laying off en masse (cough, Embracer), but it isn't going to happen

To put it simply, Sony have just done exactly what Microsoft did.
Buying Bungie probably wasn't the best buisness move ever.

@Sanquine
To Monopolize the gaming industry don't you have to be in first place at least, or even 2nd place? The Xbox is getting crushed in console sales. Even after the acquisition of Activision they haven't righted the ship and started kicking Sony into the dirt...yet.

@Sifi
Buying a one trick pony like Bungie when you don't have a ton of money to throw around was a terrible idea for Sony

@ZuneTattooGuy SaaS (software as a service) is what Microsoft is leading at (Gamepass)! I think with the acquisition of AB they are the party to become the Netflix of gaming. Sony and Nintendo won’t have the capital to compete.

On your remark: they are now in second place but they will become the largest.

@Sanquine
Usually good business moves do help you climb the ladder, but the FTC attacking them prematurely was super annoying.

@ZuneTattooGuy I give you that the FTC seems very childish and is against the big bad corporates

@Sanquine Only monopoly anywhere is Sony's with a 80% cut of the market. Microsoft's monopoly in gaming is just bad fiction.

@TheLastHarbinger console market. Microsoft plays ahead of the game, Sony plays current game better. This entire generation Sony has been doing what Microsoft does just a little afterwards. Microsoft buys publisher's, Sony buys publisher's, Microsoft emphasises pc and cross platform, Sony emphasises pc cross platform, Microsoft lays people off, Sony lays people off. Sony simply has a decade + of better received games and marketing.

Microsoft are in the position to get a monopoly of cloud gaming which is set to be a far larger market than console gaming.

Unrelated, did anyone besides me see their wishlist totally disappear?? I went to rebuild it and the next day it was gone again!! What the?? 😡

PlayStation ain't my thing anymore in part thanks to some painful past closures (Studio Liverpool/Psygnosis, Japan Studio, etc.). And now this...

Wish the affected people a better future.

Awful news no matter who is doing the lay offs.
The writting was on the wall once those profit margins were analysed, but i might have hoped they found another way
My s8ncere hope is 5hat the affected workers are ok, but the market is flooded with redundant devs right now - it must be a hard jobs market.

The whole gaming industry is standing on the edge of the biggest precipice since the 80’s.
Sad to see so many losing jobs.
It’s only just the end of February and the jobs losses are catastrophic.
AI is the big thing but it will cost jobs and in the long term will stifle creativity.

@EvilSilentFrame Yes it's sad all around. But we can't just ignore how the comment section of the MS announcement was so very different than this one. All sadness and empathy vs anger and negativity. Really is telling about how, even on an xbox fan site, the companies are viewed.

@Grippie I totally get that, and they were wrong to do that. It’s very frustrating. I predominantly play on my Series X. Been a fan of Xbox since the beginning and it’s tough to constantly see all the negativity towards Xbox, but in my opinion, this isn’t the situation to console war over.

People can lose everything over this. I lost a job years ago during the housing market crash and the stock market crash. Jobs were laying people off constantly, but I was one of the lucky ones who found a job shortly afterwards. I know people who lost their homes. Friends that had kids that had nowhere to go. They struggled to feed their kids. They struggled to pay their bills.

Does it suck that PS fanboys flame Xbox anytime something negative happens at Xbox? Absolutely, and again this is only my opinion, but the real victims in this are those that lost their jobs. When looked at through that lens, it makes the whole “they did it to us” seem rather small.

I’m hoping that didn’t come across as attacking you. I would never do that and through text, it’s hard to tell the tone somebody is using. I don’t start fights or encourage them. I respect your opinion and welcome discussions on different points of views.

As with every company, Sony is at the whim of shareholders. After they announced PS5 sales would not meet expectations and that the games profit margin would decrease they had $10 bln wiped off their stock value. Shareholders demand they get a return on investment and took the sword to Sony.

https://www.vcpost.com/articles/124614/20240219/sony-loses-10-billion-ps5-sales-drop-games-profit-year.htm

Sony's reaction was this layoff. It is sad, but the truth is shareholders rule the world, not the gaming CEOs, not the publishers, and not the tech people making games. That is the way it is in any industry. Company moves are driven by shareholders and nothing else.