A few days ago, some unfortunate came out that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) Europe was hit with layoffs. First reported by the website Video Games Chronicle (VGC), these layoffs occurred on this past Tuesday, and affected “dozens” of SIE Europe employees across the marketing and PR departments. Layoffs apparently also occurred in the company’s US creative services team as well.
The move reportedly came from American SIE executives visiting the SIE Europe offices to announce the restructuring of the aforementioned marketing and PR departments. After the announcement, affected employees were then handed their notices, then meetings were set up for some of those employees that needed to re-interview for their same positions.
According to VGC’s sources, these most recent layoffs are part of a “significant number” of layoffs that have happened at SIE Europe since Sony decided to bring all their branches under one infrastructure back in April of 2018. According to VGC, since then, the influence of SIE America has grown significantly and employees of SIE Europe even worry that their branch of the company will continue to see its influence on the PlayStation brand diminish over the course of the next generation which is just over the horizon.
This news comes at an interesting crossroads for Sony and PlayStation. These layoffs occurred the same day the company revealed more information on the PlayStation 5 including holiday 2020 release window. It also comes just a little over a week since it was announced that the Chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, is departing the company. However, there are plenty of other big things going on with PlayStation currently. PS Now recently received price drop to be more competitive against Xbox Game Pass, Crossplay is officially out of beta for developers to use, and the company launched their own online store, PlayStation Direct, to sell hardware, accessories, and games.