Jim Ryan made an interesting new statement in relation to the Call of Duty franchise, and really, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.
27.02.2024 - 13:39 / thegamer.com / Jim Ryan / London Studio / Sony
PlayStation is laying off 900 workers. As part of this, it will shut down its London Studio entirely, likely cancelling its announced new IP. There will also be layoffs at other Sony-owned studios in the UK, including Firesprite studio, which it acquired in 2021.
Shortly after this announcement, Sony revealed that its US-based studios will be affected too. Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog will also be affected, having just shipped Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered respectively.
"The PlayStation community means everything to us, so I felt it was important to update you on a difficult day at our company," reads a blog post from Sony CEO Jim Ryan. "We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8% or about 900 people."
Explaining why the cuts are being made, Ryan says that the industry "has changed immensely". In an email to workers, Ryan also says that the layoffs are being made in order to "continue to grow the business and develop the company".
Incidentally, Firesprite was made up of developers from another studio that Sony shut down in 2012. While Firesprite will at least stay open, unlike London Studio, it's being named in the list of workplaces included in today's layoffs, although it remains to be seen how many staff will be affected.
Jim Ryan made an interesting new statement in relation to the Call of Duty franchise, and really, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.
It sounds like all is not well at Sony studio Firesprite, which the platform holder acquired in 2021. Despite moving into expensive new digs in its home city of Liverpool, a Eurogamer report paints an extremely grim picture of the outfit, which is allegedly bleeding staff and lost its managing director Graeme Ankers suddenly last May.
Sony has today confirmed around 900 PlayStation employees — or around eight per cent of its workforce — are being laid off in order to «future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead». As a result of the downsizing, PlayStation's own London Studio is being closed completely and Firesprite will be reduced in size. The staff reductions will also hit Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, and Guerrilla Games. Some unannounced games have been cancelled.
Update: Sony has officially released the PS5 Slim, which is slowly starting to replace the original model at retail. All the details and links you need have been added below.
In case you missed the big news last week, PlayStation joined the rest of the industry in cutting hundreds of jobs across its business. What's more, the platform holder is closing one of its longest-standing developers, London Studio — but it seems another UK team may have been at risk, too.
Media Molecule has reportedly avoided closure amid the continuing round of layoffs. In 2023, approximately 9,000 workers in the video game industry were hit by a round of layoffs and some of these workers included employees at Media Molecule. Perhaps the most shocking was the fact that these layoffs had hit the biggest companies, such as Hasbro, EA, Microsoft, and more. It seemed like that was the worst it would get, and many looked to 2024 with hope for the future.
PlayStation recently announced that it will be reducing its workforce by roughly 8 percent, which translates to around 900 layoffs, and given that number, it’s no surprise that the effects are going to be felt across the company. A number of major first-party studios are set to make job cuts, Firepsrite’s rumoured Twisted Metal game has been cancelled (alongside reports of workplace toxicity within the studio), while SIE London Studio has been shut down entirely.
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Sony Interactive Entertainment is cutting around 900 members of staff from its workforce.
Despite mixed receptions to its reveal and niche usage, Sony’s PlayStation Portal has done pretty well, selling out in the UK and United States within two days of launch. If you thought demand had slowed over the months, PlayStation vice president of product management Hiromi Wakai confirmed the opposite.
Japan's Sony is cutting about 900 jobs at its PlayStation unit and shutting a studio in London, it said on Tuesday as the videogame industry struggles to recover from a post-pandemic slump.
They say you don’t know what’ll work until you try it out, and that’s been a staple of the gaming industry for decades! Between arcades, consoles, handhelds, and everything in between, publishers and developers have tried anything and everything to get people to come to their systems and try out their stuff. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes, you get a revolution, and that can lead to big things on the horizon. Last year, Sony unveiled the PlayStation Portal feature, which would give fans a mobile way to play their PS5 games in a more mobile capacity. At first, it seemed like a “weird peripheral” to have. However, the heads of Sony have been blown away by what it’s doing.