• by Colin Kirkland , February 27, 2024

In an email sent out by Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan on Tuesday, it has been announced that the video-game company is laying off around 900 employees from its PlayStation division in the Americas, Japan, EMEA and APAC regions, following ongoing trends in the game and tech industries.

“We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8 percent or about 900 people, subject to local law and consultation processes,” wrote Ryan. “Employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted.”

In addition, Sony will close its London Studio in the UK, which was responsible for developing the company's virtual reality games.

“After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company,” added Ryan. “We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community.”

The news comes shortly after Sony missed its sales target for the PS5 console, originally expecting to sell 25 million units in 2023 but revising the number to 21 million units, reporting low operating income and the “latter stage” of the PS5’s life cycle.

In general, Sony isn’t the only game developer that is suffering. In January, Microsoft laid off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees –– a similar percentage of its global workforce –– while Unity laid off of 25% of its total workforce and Discord laid off 17% of its employees.