PlayStation laying off 900 employees, closing London Studio

[the-pi-guy]

BREAKING: PlayStation is laying off around 900 people across the world, the latest cut in a brutal 2024 for the video game industry

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 27, 2024

Sony Interactive Entertainment announces a reduction in its global workforce: https://t.co/O5hLTYGltq

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) February 27, 2024

In the UK, it is proposed:  
That PlayStation Studios' London Studio will close in its entirety;
That there will be reductions in Firesprite studio;  
And that there will be reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK.

[kitler53]

so this will get games to release faster right?

[the-pi-guy]

Farewell Jim Ryan ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/En2wEKjUwV

— Izzy ??????? (@izzyfoley94) February 22, 2024

I can't imagine throwing a party for your boss, only to get laid off a week later.

[nnodley]

ugh its only going to get worse. Thats what, 6k to 7k layoffs across the industry just this year alone?

[Legend]

That sucks. Was London studio making a new vr game?

[Horizon]

The UK games industry is not in a good place apart from R* North and Playground games.

[the-pi-guy]

That sucks. Was London studio making a new vr game?

No a live service game

[Horizon]

This GAAS pivot was always going to be a difficult and painful one but its evident they might have gone a bit too hard into GAAS.

[kitler53]

That sucks. Was London studio making a new vr game?

we got this a while back:



coop and GaaS and that concept art is all we know about it afaik.

i'll assume with the studio closing that the game is canceled.   i liked the concept art at least.   

[the-pi-guy]

NEW: As part of today's mass layoff, Sony has canceled a Twisted Metal live-service game that was in development at UK-based studio Firesprite, Bloomberg has learned.

Firesprite will also lay off an unspecified number of people. https://t.co/pvCDsS7yxe

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 27, 2024

Despite some recent scuttlebutt suggesting that Twisted Metal was close to release, the game was in early development and wasn't yet greenlit, per source

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 27, 2024

Kind of seems to back the idea that Firesprite is having trouble getting their games off the ground too.

[kitler53]

ugh.   

sony looks to have shame the bed with ps5.   it's been an okay gen i guess but it's been taking ages to get anything out the door.   i swear we've heard of more cancellations than actual games in the last 2 years.

[SWORDF1SH]

Sony's live service dream is over. Didn't even give it a chance.

[the-pi-guy]

Sony's live service dream is over. Didn't even give it a chance.

A few studios are still working on them.

Guerilla, Firewalk, Haven Studio, Bungie.

[Legend]

Sony's live service dream is over. Didn't even give it a chance.

Yeah I expected these games to have trouble post release where only a few find long term success.

Instead it looks like only a few will even make it to release.

ugh.  

sony looks to have shame the bed with ps5.   it's been an okay gen i guess but it's been taking ages to get anything out the door.   i swear we've heard of more cancellations than actual games in the last 2 years.

I blamed a lot of it on the pandemic but it looks like Sony is making big mistakes too.

Wonder what Herman Hulst's roll in all of this is. Going from Killzone to Horizon was brilliant in so many ways and I expected other studios to replicate that. Instead we're stuck with stuff like this.

[nnodley]

seems the live service stuff was the biggest blunder. Sony had so much success with single player story games that I don't really understand the super hard push to live service. I understand the money aspect and growth, but there really isn't that many live service games that make a big impact.  There's just not that many success stories for this kind of push.