The Japanese Sony announced this Tuesday that it will eliminate about 900 jobs in its PlayStation unit and its studio in London will be the most affected, as it will close after more than two decades of life, all while the video game industry struggles to recover from a post-pandemic crisis.
The layoffs will affect around 8% of the division’s staff in regions from the Americas to Asia and come days after Sony slashed its annual sales expectations for its PlayStation 5 console.
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“We have come to the conclusion that difficult decisions have become inevitable,” said Sony gaming chief Jim Ryan, blaming changes in the way the video game industry develops, distributes and releases products. . Ryan will retire in March.
The move aligns Sony with companies such as Microsoft and Tencent-owned Riot Games, which has also laid off thousands of employees in recent months due to the slow recovery of the video game market.
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The global video game market grew just 0.6% last year to $184 billion, according to industry tracker Newzoo, although that was better than a drop of more than 5% in 2022.
Sony will lay off 900 PlayStation employees and close its London studio
The layoffs will also affect other Sony studios, including U.S.-based Insomniac Games, which worked on games like “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” and Naughty Dog, the studio behind “The Last of Us.”
Sony had said earlier this month that it expects a gradual decline in PlayStation 5 unit sales starting in the next fiscal year and that it does not plan to release any major franchise titles in the next fiscal year.
The device (PlayStation 5) has racked up sales of more than 50 million units since its launch in late 2020, after a slow initial few years when supply shortages caused by the pandemic limited the entertainment conglomerate’s production of devices.
Shares of Sony Group Corporation fell less than 1% following the news.
2024-02-27 22:36:59
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