PlayStation lays off 900 people and closes a studio. The makers of The Last of Us and Spider-Man 2 were impressed

Game news PlayStation lays off 900 people and closes a studio. The makers of The Last of Us and Spider-Man 2 were impressed

We learned today… PlayStation is laying off about 8% of its global workforce, which represents about 900 employees. It was Jim Ryan, the boss of Sony’s video games division until the following month, who announced the news. conversed This February 27, 2024. Employees in all areas of Sony Interactive Entertainment are affected, including some internal studios.. Among the lot are Insomniac Games (Marvel’s Spider-Man), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and Guerrilla Games (Horizon), reports Bloomberg, referring to the “three most successful subsidiaries” of PlayStation. Among the creators of Horizon Zero Dawn, we’re talking about making 40 people redundant, or 10% of the team.

above all, This reorganization marks the closure of the London studio, the Sony team specializing in virtual reality (VR Worlds | Blood and Truth). Last we heard, the company was working on an online multiplayer game “set in modern fantasy London.” This as-yet-unknown project has been canceled along with several other games in development — also Bloomberg notes. On this issue, Fireprit Company, which is also subject to retrenchment, is concerned. She was working on the Twisted Metal service game, the popular racing and “Demolition Derby” franchise.

“Hard decisions have become inevitable”

“Through discussions (…) about the evolving economic landscape, how we develop, deliver, launch products and ensure that our group is future-ready in this fast-growing industry, we have concluded That difficult decisions have been made. Inevitable,” says Jim Ryan in a message to employees.

The PlayStation boss also makes it clear that in Japan, a “career support program” will be established, and in other countries, discussions will be held with people affected or “at risk”… This is not somewhere, that the logical sequence things a few days ago , Sony lowered PS5 sales targets for the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year. According to some analysts, The margin of the company’s games is also not in good condition

, due to ever-increasing production costs. PlayStation has been trying to invest in the genre of games for years. Game-as-a-service. For the moment, this strategy has not yet borne fruit. Note that Sony is clearly not the only one to announce layoffs. More recently, Microsoft and Supermassive Games (until Dawn) did the same.