Two months in 2024 and the video game industry is facing another round of major layoffs. This time, Sony has announced that it is laying off about 8% or about 900 people across its global PlayStation workforce. This affects PlayStation studios such as Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerrilla,. Most significantly, PlayStation Studios’ London Studio will close in its entirety.

As a result of those lay-offs, it is not surprising that projects that were in development have been cancelled. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, this includes a Twisted Metal live-service game that was in development at UK-based studio Firesprite.

SOURCE

 

[ChibiMofo]

Waiting for the inevitable announcement that Microsoft stock prices have fallen by like 75% or something. Honestly this is like Armageddon Week for video game companies.

Eight percent of Microsoft's revenue is from gaming. As has been the case since their founding in 1975, a very small amount of what Microsoft does has nothing to do with Xbox or Windows games. In fact most Microsoft employees don't ever play videogames. It's just not that important a division of Microsoft. The cloud services by themselves account for more than 5 times as much revenues as games, and that's true of Office software as well. So no, MSFT is not going to go down 75%. To the contrary, their stock price is up nearly $300 a share (!!!!) since 2019. And because of AI, it is only going to go up from here, regardless of how the Xbox division does. Games just aren't that important and that division has not been what has fueled MSFT's price.

 

[Aristeia]

Not a big surprise, the whole sector has been cutting all the winter fat.