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Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

sonyinteractive.com

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Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#21

Post by nerdjon »

I really wish we had more concrete information on what caused this.

Is this a downturn in gaming and revenue and actually needing to do this to stay afloat or just the company seeing lower than expected sales but still profitable.

I know that they announced that the PS5 sold lower than expected but they also mentioned exploring other platforms for their games.

Playstation has a reputation of all of their games doing well, the hardware selling well. So if even they need to downsize what does that mean for the industry.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#22

Post by Grazester »

this_user wrote: post #14
neocritter wrote: post #4

Is 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.

It's selling well. It may not be "omg we are drowning in sales". Sony has also broken even on the cost of hardware within a year of hardware sales

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#23

Post by mysterydip »

amelius wrote: post #16

"While these are challenging times, it is not indicative of a lack of strength of our company, our brand, or our industry."

Which is interesting, given how many "extremely difficult decision"s have been made in the games industry so far this year:

"Roughly 8,500 video game industry workers were laid off in 2022, according to a layoff tracker created by video game artist Farhan Noor. That number jumped to 10,500 in 2023. Layoffs in 2024 are outpacing those numbers, with more than 6,000 people laid off from their video game industry jobs just 90 days into the year." https://publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2024

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#24

Post by opyate »

nerdjon wrote: post #21

I really wish we had more concrete information on what caused this. Is this a downturn in gaming and revenue and actually needing to do this to stay afloat or just the company seeing lower than expected sales but still profitable. I know that they announced that the PS5 sold lower than expected but they also mentioned exploring other platforms for their games. Playstation has a reputation of all of their games doing…

Of course they're still profitable.

But instead of making a gazillion-and-one dollars, like they "forecasted", they only made a gazillion dollars.

So, in the interest of "maximising shareholder value" and maintaining "growth", the board has now concluded that heads must roll for this.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#25

Post by nerdjon »

this_user wrote: post #14
neocritter wrote: post #4

Is 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.

I don't think that is what they announced, it did not reach their sales targets but they may have been expecting people to "upgrade" to the slim PS5 in those sales targets.

It could still be selling well by every metric except for a higher expected sales than it should be. Especially since they also increased the prices in a few markets.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#26

Post by selectodude »

miohtama wrote: post #18
dtx1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn’t the PS5 just a juiced up PS4 at this point? How much is the SDK really changing from generation to generation anymore?

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#27

Post by jl6 »

What I would dearly love is for Microsoft and Sony to recognize that nobody wants to release platform-exclusive titles that cut the audience in half, and pivot the console industry away from being mutually-incompatible bespoke devices and towards being a blessed open PC configuration that gets battle-tested, mass produced, and LTS-supported. Architecturally they’re 90% of the way there having AMD CPU+GPUs under the hood of both latest generation consoles. Call me optimistic…

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#28

Post by dspillett »

Grazester wrote: post #22
this_user wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's selling well. It may not be "omg we are drowning in sales". Sony has also broken even on the cost of hardware within a year of hardware sales

In a company like Sony, where shareholder value trumps any other value, "omg we are drowning in sales" is the definition of selling well and anything less is seen as a problem.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#29

Post by sandofsky »

neocritter wrote: post #4

Is 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.

It seems relevant that the company has scaled back its live service ambitions in recent months.

https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-commits-to-launch-just-six...

It seems many game companies thought they could build the next Fortnite/Destiny, but 1) it’s hard to start with that goal and move backwards, and 2) attention is a scarce resource, with most people only having enough room in their lives for a single live service game.

It's also very likely that live service revenue was unusually high starting in 2020, due to everyone stuck at home craving social interaction. So just like FAANG companies over-hiring during that period, the games industry was due for a correction.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#30

Post by warp »

nerdjon wrote: post #21

I really wish we had more concrete information on what caused this. Is this a downturn in gaming and revenue and actually needing to do this to stay afloat or just the company seeing lower than expected sales but still profitable. I know that they announced that the PS5 sold lower than expected but they also mentioned exploring other platforms for their games. Playstation has a reputation of all of their games doing…

Gaming saw a huge increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies staffed up, because they either had a bunch more money coming in or it was easy to get investments. All these gaming layoffs to me seem like a correction back to pre-covid levels.

We've also seen a bunch of consolidation in recent years, which in itself makes some positions redundant.

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