PlayStation chief Jim Ryan said the cut would affect 900 people worldwide, including at video game creation studios.
“ Sad
news
,” he said.
The PlayStation London studio, founded in 2002 and specialized in virtual reality game projects, will completely close its doors, the Japanese entertainment giant said.
The American studios Insomniac Games (originator of the Spider-Man game), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and Guerilla (Horizon) are also affected.
PlayStation sales are running out of steam
Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, said the company needs more resources to focus on mobile and PC games.
“We looked at our studios and our portfolio, evaluated projects at different stages of development and decided that some of them would not proceed
,” he said.
“Our philosophy has always been to encourage creative experimentation.
Sometimes great ideas don't become great games
.
The social plan comes after Sony warned this month that sales of the PlayStation 5 would not meet initial targets, while the flagship console is in its fourth year on sale.
Wave of layoffs in video games
Sony's video game business has seen great success with
"Marvel's Spider-Man 2"
, released on PS5 last October, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game within 24 hours of its release.
But the PlayStation 5 faces fierce competition from the Nintendo Switch and could see its rivalry with Microsoft's Xbox harden, after the American group's acquisition of the publisher of
"Call of Duty"
, Activision Blizzard.
In January, Microsoft announced the layoff of 1,900 people, or 8% of its staff, in its
“games”
division , in order to consolidate the acquisition of Activision.
The video game sector is facing a wave of layoffs.
Since the start of the year, layoffs have amounted to nearly 44,000 people, according to the site, in 171 companies.