Sony has recently begun to shift their focus on streaming games and services instead of retail. Many companies have begun to focus on this shift after the pandemic created a demand for more digital games. Many of Sony’s games are already digital and the total amount has steadily increased over the past few years. This new focus has led Sony to release upwards of 90 employees across North America.
Sony is shifting due to a “global transformation of the company’s sales and business operations.” This transformation will likely lead to more streaming of their biggest games and online purchases of their products. Additionally, the company will also be cutting from their retail marketing jobs. These jobs help find the best ways to market Sony’s products to consumers in retail locations.
Many of the jobs that were cut come from Sony’s “merchandiser” teams that deal with the retail side of the company. The merchandisers would often be tasked with traveling to retail locations and teaching workers about Sony and their products. Sony has yet to release any sort of comment on the layoffs of these workers.
While many of Sony’s retail jobs have been released, the company is seeing an increase in direct-to-consumer jobs that have opened. Sony is currently looking to hire people for jobs in their marketing department. These jobs will have workers selling subscription services for their various memberships.
The marketing jobs will likely be related to their new programs that are releasing. Sony has recently released Playstation Plus to compete with the Xbox Game Pass. The new Playstation Plus accounts are multi-tiered and will include over 700 games for users at various levels. These services are expected to be released in June and many players are very excited for the new service.
As Sony begins to shift their focus onto digital games and services, it will be important to follow how the shifts affect the workers at their company.