Hermen Hulst

PlayStation has announced that it is laying off about 900 people, which is roughly 8% of its workforce, and as you might imagine for restructuring of that scale, studios across the entire company are going to be affected, including some of the biggest names under the PlayStation Studios banner.

As the ol’ Spice Girls song goes: two become one. PlayStation has decided to replace Jim Ryan with two executives: Hermen Hulst, the former Guerrilla managing director and current PS Studios chief, will lead a newly named Studio Business Group unit, which will oversee all of the Japanese giant’s first-party studios, as well as its other projects, like PS Productions’ movies and TV shows. He’ll be flanked by Hideaki Nishino, who will lead the organisation’s Platform Business Group, responsible for hardware, accessories, PSN, and third-party relations.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has revealed May 2024’s PlayStation Plus Game Catalogue and Classics titles.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has named Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino as the new joint CEOs of the PlayStation business, succeeding Jim Ryan from June 1, 2024.

Following the departure of former Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan, the company announced that Hideaki Nishino will be appointed CEO of the Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Platform Business Group, and Hermen Hulst will be appointed to CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group, effective June 1, 2024. Hiroki Totoki, who is currently serving as interim CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, will serve as chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment in addition to his role as president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer of Sony Group Corporation. Nishino and Hulst will report to Totoki, and intend to collaborate closely to strengthen each core business while maximizing synergies at Sony Interactive Entertainment.

PlayStation-backed game studio, Deviation Games, has closed.

Sony has released this month’s first PlayStation Plus games.

Guerrilla’s multiplayer Horizon game is reportedly not among a number of recently cancelled PlayStation titles.

Insomniac Games has released a public statement in response to layoffs at the studio announced this week by parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Sony has confirmed March 2024’s PlayStation Plus Essential games.

It's a distressing time for the gaming industry. Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed it would be laying off a huge number of employees across the globe and closing a significant studio «in its entirety».

As part of the sweeping layoffs of 900 Sony Interactive Entertainment employees, Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios, has confirmed that there have been some game cancellations.

Guerrilla Games is reportedly cutting 10% of its workforce as part of wider layoffs announced on Tuesday by parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Anyone working in the video game industry must feel as if they have a target painted on their back. 2023 saw at least 6000 people lose their jobs and 2024 is somehow looking much worse. January saw Microsoft sack 9000 people, there’s been a raft of smaller studio closures and staff cuts. Now Sony has joined this miserable party, handing 900 PlayStation workers their notices across the company.

As part of the sweeping layoffs of 900 Sony Interactive Entertainment employees, Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios, has confirmed that there have been some game cancellations.

With the news surrounding PlayStation laying off 900 employees, the rumored Twisted Metal title from Firesprite is also seemingly dead. Following his initial report on the layoffs, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier tweeted that Sony has cancelled a live service Twisted Metal title that Firesprite was developing.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has reportedly cancelled a Twisted Metal game as part of restructuring plans announced on Tuesday.

[UPDATE] According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Sony has also canceled the new Twisted Metal live service game in early development at Firesprite for PlayStation 5 (and possibly PC).

Sony has announced mass layoffs across PlayStation Studios with 8% or around 900 people set to be made redundant across their worldwide studios. This will include the complete shutdown of London Studio, while Naughty Dog, Insomniac and other studios are affected as well.

Sony is to lay off 900 people, equating to eight percent of its workforce. This reduction will see PlayStation Studios' London Studio close in its entirety, plus reductions made within Sony's Firesprite studio. There will also be reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK

PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst has confirmed that some projects have been cancelled in the wake of layoffs across Sony Interactive Entertainment.

PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst has said the platform holder is “reevaluating how we operate” as part of its decision to lay off 900 employees worldwide.

PlayStation is set to lay off around 900 employees worldwide.

Sony Interactive Entertainment will lay off about 900 employees across the globe, or about eight percent of its total workforce, the company announced. London Studio, which was developing an online cooperative combat game set in a fantasy London for PlayStation 5, will also close in its entirety as a result of the lay offs.

PlayStation is the latest name to join an increasingly long list of companies that have been hit with layoffs in just the first two months of what’s already been a brutal year for the industry. With around 900 jobs being cut, a number of first-party studios are set to be impacted, including Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Guerrilla, and Firesprite.

As it lays off around 900 people across Sony's stable of studios, including cuts at Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and the entirety of now-defunct PlayStation London, PlayStation Studios is also canning multiple unannounced projects. 

Sony Interactive Entertainment is cutting 8% of its global PlayStation workforce, including the complete closure of PlayStation London Studio.

Sony is laying off around 900 employees in its PlayStation division, the company announced on Tuesday. The cuts will impact 8% of the division’s global workforce, as Sony becomes the latest company to announce major cuts in recent weeks and months. Sony also announced that it will be closing its London Studio in the U.K.

The upcoming boss of Sony's PlayStation, Hiroki Totoki, has said that bringing the company's first-party line-up to PC could be a way of improving its margins.

Sony president and PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki wants the company be “aggressive” when it comes to improving its gaming division’s profit margins, which he says can partly be achieved with a greater focus on bringing first-party games to PC.

One of the big talking points emerging as part of Microsoft’s rumoured switch in strategy is that a reduction in competition could result in complacency from PlayStation and its army of first-party developers. The issue, according to some, is that if Xbox were to abandon its own hardware – which, for the record, isn’t what any speculation is suggesting – Sony would have no real reason to compete.

PlayStation has announced the year's first State of Play games showcase event, set to stream January 31. The 40-minute showcase will feature extended looks at Shift Up's action-adventure title Stellar Blade and Team Ninja's action-RPG Rise of the Ronin, both of which will arrive on the PS5 this year. The State of Play event will cover over 15 games in total, providing more details on PS5 and PS VR2 titles releasing in 2024 and beyond. The event will be livestreamed on PlayStation's YouTube, Twitch and TikTok channels, starting Wednesday, January 31 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm GMT, or 3:30am on Thursday in India.

Destiny 2 developer Bungie are staring down the barrel of a full Sony takeover if forthcoming expansion The Final Shape doesn’t meet sales expectations, according to several anonymous current and former employees. The same sources also claim that the studio are prepared to cut staff again to meet their financial obligations as a Sony subsidiary, having laid off a significant proportion of their workforce in November.

Around a month on from a major round of layoffs, Bungie developers have opened up to IGN about low morale within the studio, and the risks that Sony could take away the autonomy of what is currently an independent subsidiary of Sony if they cannot meet financial targets.

When PlayStation’s acquisition of Bungie was finalized last year, it happened under special circumstances for the latter in particular. Bungie has remained fully autonomous and continues to function as an independent subsidiary under Sony’s ownership, though it seems the studio might be under threat of losing that special status, as per a report published by IGN.

Around a month on from a major round of layoffs, Bungie developers have opened up to IGN about low morale within the studio, and the risks that Sony could take away the autonomy of what is currently an independent subsidiary of Sony if they cannot meet financial targets.

Last year, Sony acquired Halo creator and Destiny developer Bungie, but in October, it was hit with mass layoffs. Now, a report from IGN claims that developers within the company fear a Sony takeover and further outsourcing.

Destiny 2 studio Bungie could reportedly lose its independence under Sony if it fails to meet certain financial goals.

Bungie’s position as an independent subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment is reportedly under serious threat.

One month after a major round of layoffs impacted roughly 100 Bungie employees of 1,200, those remaining at the Destiny developer say the cuts, as well as other cost-cutting measures, came alongside an apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has halved the number of live service games it plans to release in the coming years, it’s confirmed.

Today, IGN Japan reports that esteemed Tokyo-based developer FromSoftware has begun 'large-scale recruitment' for multiple projects, as evidenced by this webpage on the studio's website.

PlayStation's Head of Internal Studios, Connie Booth, has left the company after 34 hours, Sony has now confirmed.

Connie Booth, current SVP of PlayStation's internal production team, is reportedly no longer working at Sony Interactive Entertainment. News of her departure was revealed by God of War designer David Jaffe, who claimed Booth's 27-year tenure at the developer was over. 

Sony has continued to aggressively expand its efforts in the live service space in recent years, and with the likes of Concord and Fairgame$, the company has also started to reveal some of the live service titles it currently has in the pipeline. And while some have been concerned that that will mean reduced emphasis on the narrative-driven experiences that PlayStation first party has become synonymous with, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan has said that that is not the case.

Sony has launched the ‘PlayStation Publisher Sale’ on Steam and Epic Games Store.