Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

sonyinteractive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#41

Post by bart_spoon »

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…

My understanding is that PlayStation’s big hit games have had particularly low margins. Despite selling well, they have generally been extremely expensive to make. They’ve helped them beat Microsoft in the console war, but I don’t think it was ever sustainable.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#42

Post by [deleted] »

rychco wrote: post #17
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.

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 e…

[deleted]

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#43

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#44

Post by jodacola »

Ah, more layoffs!

Setting aside the things I'm feeling when reading this, I'm trying to piece together a picture, for my own curiosity, of this trend, and I'm left with many questions, among those:

* Are all these layoffs meaningfully based in some hard economic data (e.g. end of ZIRP and some real analytical assessments of the direction of the economy)?

* Or, is this some form of corporate herd mentality?

There's no malice in my comment, but I often teeter back and forth between "these collections of smart people are surely doing some data-anchored homework before making these decisions" and "nobody knows what we're doing and the easiest thing is to immediately increase profit, like my friends at that other company!"

I just want to form a more realistic and objective image of how these massive companies operate, whether or not that image may seem optimistic or cynical.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#45

Post by coldpie »

opyate wrote: post #24
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.

Good news, these 900 employees that were collectively terminated can now individually bargain the terms of their layoff! ...Right?

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#46

Post by d-z-m »

> In Japan, we will implement a next career support program. Details will be communicated separately.

> In other countries, we will begin conversations with those who are potentially at risk or impacted as a result of this proposed course of action.

what is a "next career support program"? Is it something specific to Japan/required by Japanese law after a round of layoffs?

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#47

Post by neocritter »

selectodude wrote: post #26
miohtama wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The life of the juiced up Gamecube (Wii) might offer some guidance here.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#48

Post by jonhohle »

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.

Despite a slow start it’s currently selling at a rate that would allow it to catch the PS4 which is the 5ᵀᴴ most sold console ever. I’m not sure what the guidance was, but even if they were off 4% this last quarter that still puts the PS4 ahead of the Wii by the end of its life.

I doubt a company would ever announce a console is EOL befor their next one is on the shelves. Are you sure that wasn’t about the PS4?

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#49

Post by xp84 »

Spivak wrote: post #5

It must be fun to be paid millions to write boilerplate "our incredible journey" garbage and pretend it's serious. They just announced 7% growth sales forecast prior to the layoffs, they aren't a struggling company that needs to buy more runaway. God I just wish one executive had the balls to say, "yeah we're culling 8% of our staff largely randomly because we estimated our dead weight is greater than that." It would…

It doesn’t seem like you’ve gotten to know anybody who’s implemented a RIF. I have and every manager involved right up to the CEO fucking hates the whole thing. It makes you sick to your stomach, and they realize that no matter how much they hate doing it, many of those affected will still think they’re callous jerks for it. It’s just business.

Re: Sony Interactive Entertainment lays off 900 people

#50

Post by makomk »

opyate wrote: post #24
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.

It's not just a question of shareholder value and profits always needing to go up - there are real society-wide opportunity costs to companies like Sony continuing as before. All of the workers they employ and the resources they use are workers and resources that cannot instead be producing other things, and the increase in interest rates that's lead to all these layoff is essentially a signal that those opportunity costs are higher and the bar for economic activity to be viable is higher than before.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the pandemic and the economic shutdowns hugely impacted economic output in a way that couldn't be magicked away by printing money and handing out furlough payments - all the furloughed and unemployed workers and shuttered still produced nothing during that time, that unusued capacity could not be saved up for later, and so it wasn't possible for everyone to continue buying the same amount of stuff as before even though goverments in the developed world tried to create the illusion they could. This also created a temporary increase in demand in certain sectors, like video games, which has since vanished.

Post reply on HN