In a year proving to offer even less job security than the year prior, Sony is the latest company to announce they are cutting a large number of jobs across several of their company. In total, around 900 jobs, or 8% of its employees will be terminated.
Soon to depart Sony Interactive Entertainment President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Ryan sent out a note on Tuesday, announcing the decision to cut these jobs to the staff of Sony. It stated:
After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company.
Sony stated that these terminations are not simply limited to Sony itself, but will affect multiple first-party studios. These affected studios include Insomniac Games, developer of the recently released Spider-Man 2 and the upcoming Wolverine, Naughty Dog, developer of The Last of Us and Uncharted, and Guerrilla Games, developer of the Horizon Franchise.
These studios have become widely known for offering some of the lynchpin experiences available on the PlayStation platform. In the case of Guerrilla Games, it is stated that 40 employees, or 10% of their studio, will be terminated though. In another case, however, Playstation London Studio, best known currently for its SingStar series, will be fully shut down by Sony.
Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst also stated in a letter on Tuesday that several planned games are also being canceled as a result of this. He stated:
Sometimes, great ideas don’t become great games. Sometimes, a project is started with the best intentions before shifts within the market or industry result in a change of plan.
In recent years Sony, under the leadership of Jim Ryan, attempted to invest heavily in the live-service market, games that can be monetized and played over a long period. To this end, Sony even acquired Destiny developer Bungie for $3.6 billion to help facilitate this. This however has proved a harder affair for the company with market oversaturation, even causing two games of this nature based on their Spider-Man and The Last of Us franchises to be canceled.
Another such game affected by this was the reboot of the Twisted Metal franchise which was being developed by one of their most recently acquired studios, Firesprite. Unfortunately, it seems this studio will also be hit by lay-offs, sources close to the studio have reported.
At percent, more than 6,000 jobs have been cut across the industry in this year alone, adding to the over 10,000 cut last year. Several factors have contributed to this, including skyrocketing project budgets combined with a slowdown in industry spending following the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as rising interest rates.
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