Pushing Buttons: When even PlayStation is cutting jobs, something is seriously wrong with games

In this week’s newsletter: Sony’s news that it is cutting jobs and cancelling projects for the mega-console underlines a depressing fact about game development – it’s go big, or go home

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I wrote last week about the decades-long console wars between Xbox and PlayStation – and how the Microsoft’s looser attitude to releasing games everywhere people play them, even on rival consoles, might be the beginning of an end to them. Now we have news that Sony is laying off 900 people across its studios all over the world. Why is the maker of the hugely successful PlayStation 5, which has outsold its main rival by three to one, doing something so drastic? It seems that the end of the console wars might come not by choice, but by necessity: the way that the games industry worked in the past is simply not how it works now.

The news that PlayStation would be laying off what amounts 8% of its workforce came via an all-company email from Jim Ryan, the company’s outgoing boss – who, less than a week ago, was pictured celebrating his Sony career at London Studios with many people who now no longer have jobs: the company is closing it entirely, along with cuts at Firesprite, and there will be “reductions in various functions” across the company in the UK. Guerilla Games (makers of the Horizon series), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and Insomniac (Marvel’s Spider-Man) are also seeing reductions. At the time of writing, Sony employees at US studios were still waiting to hear how they would be affected. “Please be kind to yourselves and to each other,” the email ends, with almost jaw-dropping irony. Continue reading…
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