Recently, the revelation of more features of the new Sony console took place. However, not all was good news for the company, as according to a report, several members of Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe (SIEE) were fired that same day, which is a major restructuring within Sony.
According to Video Games Chronicle, the people who know about this situation, members of Sony Interactive Entertainment America (SIEA) went to SIEE to announce the multiple restructuring, among which are areas of marketing and public relations, which resulted in a series of layoffs.
Different divisions around the world allow each one to focus on their respective region. This for many can be good at first sight, taking into account that they were even free to set their budgets and focus on their games. However, this meant that they shaped the market in different ways and as an example the site refers to the PlayStation Move and DriveClub promotional campaigns.
These above-mentioned campaigns were more powerful in Europe and not so much in America. The above caused some developers to show disagreement. SIE announced a restructuring of its divisions in April of last year and throughout this year it has suffered many layoffs that led to those that happened just recently.
All this responds to an alleged centralization of the brand in a global entity of which the Sony North American division is the leader. Several of these entities would report on this process to Jim Ryan, the then president of marketing and sales, who is now the president of SIE.
According to employees, SIEE is expected to have less participation in the next generation of consoles, as the influence has diminished recently. They also reported a lack of communication, they did not hear about the disclosure of the PlayStation 5 specifications until they were published. In addition, the State of Play, which they claim was the creation of this division, is headed by Sony North America, and SIEE often did not know about its content.
According to one of the artists that was affected, known on Twitter as JC, there were several layoffs and it is believed that among them are project coordinators, managers and designers, judging from the publication on the platform. In addition to this, sources indicate that dissatisfied senior members also left the company. JC made the following statement on his Twitter account.
I was part of the creative services team at PlayStation that got laidoff today. This group of talented & passionate people are out of a job & now looking for work. If you’re hiring for project coordinators, managers, & designers please post below!
Given this, Sony Interactive Entertainment refused to talk about it. Hopefully, we all can have more clarity on the subject soon. It is never nice to hear about layoffs in the video game industry. Have you been laid off before? If so, please know that we at SegmentNext think about you and wish you all the best for the future.
