Sony cuts 900 jobs in PlayStation division
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — Sony Interactive Entertainment is the recent tech firm to announce widespread layoffs, cutting 900 jobs across its PlayStation division or about 8% of the unit’s global workforce.
The restructuring comes as the Japanese gaming company revised its sales forecast for the PlayStation 5 console down to 21 million units, from a previous target of 25 million, citing slowing demand.
The job cuts will impact PlayStation employees globally, including studios like Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Insomniac Games. Sony’s London studio will be shuttered completely, said Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios.
Jim Ryan, President & CEO, Sony Interactive Entertainment acknowledged the immense change in the industry so they need to “future ready” themselves.
“We need to deliver on expectations from developers and gamers and continue to propel future technology in gaming, so we took a step back to ensure we are set up to continue bringing the best gaming experiences to the community.”
The job cuts and conservative PS5 forecast knocked Sony’s share price down 0.3% on Tuesday, lopping off around $10 billion in market value last week.
It comes amid a broader slump in gaming and a wave of layoffs across tech giants like Microsoft, which cut 1,900 Xbox division jobs in January after acquiring Activision Blizzard. Other tech companies that announced plans to cut their workforces include Alphabet, Amazon, Paypal, Salesforce, Snap Inc, Cisco and DocuSign.
According to data aggregation website Layoffs.fyi, over 240,000 employees from the tech segment were laid off globally in 2023, and more than 49,000 from 186 tech companies so far this year.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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