Sony fires 900 employees after warning of declining PlayStation sales
Tokyo:
Sony PlayStation said on Tuesday it is laying off eight percent of its global workforce, as the tech industry faces continued job cuts.
Calling it “sad news”, PlayStation chief Jim Ryan said the cuts would affect 900 people worldwide, including video-game-making studios.
The company said that due to the cuts, the company’s PlayStation London Studio, which was founded in 2002 and specialized in virtual reality gaming projects, will be closed entirely.
US studios Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog were also affected, a separate statement said.
Herman Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, said that more resources are needed as the company focuses on mobile and PC gaming.
“We looked at our studios and our portfolio, evaluated projects in various stages of development and decided that some of those projects would not move forward,” he said.
Hulst said, “Our philosophy has always been to allow creative experimentation. Sometimes, great ideas don’t make great games.”
The cut comes after Sony warned this month that PlayStation 5 sales would not meet original targets, with the flagship console currently in its fourth year on the market.
“Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” made a splash in Sony’s video game segment, which was released on PS5 in October last year and became the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in the first 24 hours after release.
But PlayStation 5 faces stiff competition from Nintendo Switch and could see a tougher rivalry with Microsoft’s Xbox after the tech giant bought “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft said in January that it was laying off 1,900 people, or eight percent of its workforce, from its gaming division as it consolidates the Activision acquisition.
Overall, the tech industry lost 260,000 jobs last year, according to layoffs.fyi, a California-based website that tracks the sector.
According to the site, 43,957 people have been retrenched from 171 companies so far this year.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)