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Sony Interactive Entertainment is claimed to have made ‘dozens’ of its European employees redundant straight after the PlayStation 5 was officially announced, as reported by Video Games Chronicle.
Sources said that Sony Interactive Entertainment America directors visited the London offices to inform the staff that the massive revisions of several divisions, like marketing and PR, would lead to redundancies. Those affected were given their notice and others were given the opportunity to re-interview for their positions. The SIEA creative services team were also hit with a handful of redundancies, and in a now-deleted tweet, one employee complained, ‘I hate that this is going to be drowned out by the #PS5 announcement.’
In addition, it is claimed that PlayStation EU had no clue that the PlayStation 5 announcement was going to happen. Employees learned that the company had officially revealed the next-generation project through the exclusive Wired interview with SIE CEO Jim Ryan.
Sony is experiencing shakeups at the moment; for example, PS Now prices have been slashed to ensure competitiveness with other streaming services. Last week, Sony Japan Asia president Atsushi Morita retired and Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden departed the company, though it’s unclear where Layden’s off to or who will be replacing him.
It is suggested that the layoffs were caused by SIE’s ambition to create a centralised global structure, and that SIEA has been granted increasing influence over the past 12 months. PlayStation’s regional divisions were used to autonomy, letting them choose which titles to sign, ship, and set budgets in accordance. However, it is said that third-party publishers did not like how fragmented business became based on this system, and so SIEA is now the vanguard of its global operations.
Fingers crossed that those affected by the redundancies are able to find new opportunities soon. Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg reached out with job openings at Microsoft, and developer Undead Labs has advertised openings to work with its team on State of Decay.
