Investors can get 5% risk free from treasuries. How much extra premium do you need for something risky, like Sony stock? The chance for 10%? 20%? This is why layoffs are happening across the economy in a high interest rate environment - the company must be profitable enough to justify the risk premium above a guaranteed 5%.
Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
11–20 of 108 posts
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#12Is this one of those "we're doing great, you're fired" situations, or is there a real market reason? The PS5 seems to be selling well.
They recently announced that PS5 is entering it's twilight phase. Sold better than series X but apparently not well enough. We're still getting new games released for both ps4 and ps5, and the value added on the latter appears marginal.
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#13Is this one of those "we're doing great, you're fired" situations, or is there a real market reason? The PS5 seems to be selling well.
Sony is saying PS5 is entering ‘The Latter Stage of Its Life Cycle’[0] while there are only 13 PS5 exclusive titles available [1]. So PS5 is propably not doing well. [0] https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-entering-the-latter-stage-o... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga...
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Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#14Is this one of those "we're doing great, you're fired" situations, or is there a real market reason? The PS5 seems to be selling well.
They only recently announced that the PS5 is rapidly reaching its EOL. It is seemingly not selling well at all. The early issues with supply and the lack of actually interesting games that are not just remakes has clearly not helped.
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#15It's not the worst "y'all are fired mail" we've seen in recent times but notice how the first two paragraphs, the most dense and buzzword ridden parts of the letter, do not include a concrete reason why they are reducing their workforce. After that part it becomes very precise and readable.
Is there ever really a reason beyond “we don’t need you and/or can’t afford you”? I don’t think it really needs to be spelled out.
Sure, the most common reason is "the shareholders & execs will make more money if we get rid of you." (No, this is not the same as "we don't need you.")
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#16"While these are challenging times, it is not indicative of a lack of strength of our company, our brand, or our industry."
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#17Is this one of those "we're doing great, you're fired" situations, or is there a real market reason? The PS5 seems to be selling well.
Playstation doesn't appear to be doing poorly, but it's hard to ignore that margins are likely worse than previous generations as AAA game budgets have skyrocketed. In fact, the lifetime sales of PS5 aren't that far behind PS4 (at the equivalent point in the PS4 lifetime).
IIRC the insomniac leak contained some internal slides that claimed at least ~6 million full-price sales of Spiderman 2 would be needed to break even on development costs.
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#18Is this one of those "we're doing great, you're fired" situations, or is there a real market reason? The PS5 seems to be selling well.
Sony is saying PS5 is entering ‘The Latter Stage of Its Life Cycle’[0] while there are only 13 PS5 exclusive titles available [1]. So PS5 is propably not doing well. [0] https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-entering-the-latter-stage-o... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga...
I spoke with some console game devs who worked with PS5 title: there is a major problem with AAA title development. Because the games have become so big, it takes 5 years to produce one. The console life cycle is 5 years as well. Thus, as a game studio, you can only cram one AAA title for each console generation.
Then you need to start from the scratch with new console, new SDKs, new bugs and so on.
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#19Is this one of those "we're doing great, you're fired" situations, or is there a real market reason? The PS5 seems to be selling well.
Sony is saying PS5 is entering ‘The Latter Stage of Its Life Cycle’[0] while there are only 13 PS5 exclusive titles available [1]. So PS5 is propably not doing well. [0] https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-entering-the-latter-stage-o... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga...
PS4 is selling at similar rates as PS5, at this point in the lifecycle they had similar sales.
That being said:
- sales have been inflated by pandemic
- most games are released on older gen consoles too
- PS5 has too little console-selling exclusives.
- Even of those that have, they are pretty much all sequels to PS4 selling games: spiderman TWO, horizon TWO, God of War TWO. Safe for Bloodborne all these first 4 years games got a PC release, so not really that exclusive
- Graphical generation jump is just "meh". Especially if you play on your sofa few meters from your TV, you're hardly to appreciate higher resolution, because besides higher resolution the PS5 only offers marginal graphical updates to games that you really need to look for (shades, reflections) and are highly dependent on the effort of the developers
Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people
#20Here's a separate press release from PlayStation Studios has more details: https://sonyinteractive.com/en/news/blog/an-important-update...
In particular it lists some other studios not mentioned in this one:
The US based studios and groups impacted by a reduction in workforce are:
* Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, as well as our Technology, Creative, and Support teams
In UK and European based studios, it is proposed:
* That PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety;
* That there will be reductions in Guerrilla and Firesprite