PlayStation Portal Demand Continues to “Exceed Our Expectations,” Says Sony

Helldivers 2 was only released last month and, already, it has had rave reviews among gamers. Early reports from those who have played the game applaud its challenging nature and it has provided a great follow-up to the first game, which was released in 2015.

The boss of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has denied a recent rumour that Sony is buying the studio.

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 confirmed it's cancelled «some» unannounced games at PlayStation Studios, and according to Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, one of them is the long-rumoured Twisted Metal game from Firesprite. The journalist reports the project was in «early development» and hadn't been greenlit by Sony to go into full production yet, according to a source.

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.

A PlayStation executive has revealed in a new interview with Game File that the handheld PS Portal device is proving a lot more popular than the company expected. Hiromi Wakai, the VP of production management, explained «demand has continued to exceed our expectations» and so Sony is now focusing its efforts on «shipping more units consistently».

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.

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).

Another day, another videogame company jettisoning a large number of people "who have contributed to our success" so as to position themselves for growth in the face of "challenging times". Today it's Sony's turn with the axe: the PlayStation publisher have announced plans to reduce their global workforce by about 8% or 900 people, so as "to future ready ourselves to set the business up for what lies ahead", in the words of outgoing president and CEO Jim Ryan.