With PS4 doing so well why so many lay-offs?

Ok, so a month ago Santa Monica staff got laid off now Evolution, London and Guerrilla staff are laid off. Not long ago key members of Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch leave their studios? While the PS4 seems to the leading console for this generation? What's going on? Sony has the momentum so why are they cutting staff and why are people leaving their first party studios?

The PS4 may be doing well, but, overall, Sony really isn't at the moment. The company has been hemorrhaging money for some time and needs to start plugging the leaks before the entire ship sinks.

I hate seeing people lose their jobs. I really do. But, if there are redundancies, it's up to Sony to curtail them and become more efficient. The result, hopefully, will be a leaner & meaner Sony that is more than capable of taking on the M$ behemoth.

The great Corporate consolidation movement is in full effect! Get rid of your senior employees but keep a few key players or ones who are willing to take a paycut.

You bring in new people at half price or less....this is pretty much the corporate agenda everywhere!

Now a guy from Evolution (making Drive Club) left...LINK. Facebook buys Oculous Rift, Sony lays people off, key people from Sony owned studios are quitting. It's looking to be a sad time for gaming.

I blame Sony for dabbling in more than they can afford to. There isn't much these days that Sony hasn't tried to sell, they make phones, tvs, digital cameras, blu ray players, tablets, and run their own movie studio and music service. They are literally spread too thin and their products cost too much. Let's not forget before they went and tried to sell all these devices there was already steep competition in each of those markets. Competition that was offering a better product and at a better price. While I'd hate to see people lose their jobs, I'm afraid either spin off it's less profitable divisions or sell them. Sometimes a pruned plant can grow more healthy than it did before

layoffs arent necessarily an indication of the successfulness [or lack thereof] of a company. sony/guerrilla/etc may have just hired extra temporary employees to help get things out by a deadline. in such a situation, once the product is finished theres no more need for such a surplus of employees hence the layoffs. theres no reason to let your imagination run wild and start speculating and making the assumption that "layoffs=failing business".

@commandokock: it's also not a good idea to turn a blind eye to the financial struggles of a company. Right now Sony is like tree with too many ornaments weighing it down and on top of that it's foliage has begun to wither

Pretty good point. Right now if Sony can keep this momentum they should be ok.

PlayStation, TV stations and Sony music are profittable. But others like Bravia, VAIO and other section of it are loosing money at a fast rare. You can't sustain a company just with half of the fronts making money.

The reason most business fail is because of abuse that the big wigs get all the money and waste the most on lavish things then the underlings are the ones who are cut when business loses the slightest profit. I work in these type of environments.

Most companies don't go under because they are necessarily in the red but because the few privileged aren't able to continue getting their million dollar bonuses. In order to sustain getting those type of bonses they need to get rid of those key players that are due their raises. They need to slim that fat off the hog.

Ps4 is easier to develop for so needs less people in the end

As for the Lead-Dev departures, well, there is a "gold rush" happening in the videogame industry ATM. Talented people with influence/clout are leaving their cooperate ties to stake a claim in the indie/kickstarter boom that is peaking. They can make the games they want to make on their own terms which is a powerful incentive to these industry-players who have dealt with such large scale game stress. They are looking to get their passion back by making the games that they've always wanted to make but were never able to convince their corp bosses to green light. This is a healthy paradigm shift as these smaller games will infuse the AAA industry with ideas(hopefully).

As for Sony, they'll need to prune off some of their failing divisions to remain solvent and hopefully their PlayStation survives the coming culling.

@jasonredemption:

They may have less money than Microsoft but personally I think Microsoft is in a worse situation. Microsoft has money but nobody is buying their products. Hell they are even giving away Windows 8. Sony will struggle but most probably be fine in the end. They make quality products that are reasonably priced.

Exactly, just about EVERY company is feeling the crunch right now(some more apparent then others)but you better believe that there are people over at MS sweating bullets right now!! lol

@MarcRecon: The whole world is in a really bad situation right now. People have stopped spending money and when they do they want a discount. I don't spend as much but I try to spend when I have it. I knew it was really bad when they asked Bill Gates to step down. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I do hope that Sony / PlayStation does well as they are the console I banked on last gen (PS3) and this one (PS4), since I'm far to poor to own both an Xbox and a PlayStation (not to mention the quality/quantity of exclusives does NOT justify it in my book even if I had the money). I was/am very happy with my PS3 and am hoping Sony can make me glad to have a PS4. :)

A lot of this is developers chasing the indie/kickstarter money train. Once that bubble bursts (and it will, probably a lot sooner than anyone thinks) those guys will be looking for employment from a major publisher again.

@jasonredemption: Sony has to prioritize their business, because the company isn't doing well and they are laying off a lot of people across the divisions

@RimacBugatti:

Same here bro, I bought my house 3 years ago and things have been good so far, but you better believe I'm on a TIGHT, DISCIPLINED budget! lol

Even Colin Moriarty is saying that Sony Studios are having a No Good, Very Bad Month.

The thing is alot of the Lay-Offs are from groups which haven't really been doing much, there just having a massive clean out, like most businesses do in hard times, I mean Sony has some many small developers doing nothing it's seems silly keeping them on, People who have lost there job at some of the major studio's is hard but end of the day it's all still a business, the games are still going to come, and hopefully they'll be better off for it.

Plus most of the lay offs would happened months ago, and were just hearing it now,

Now Uncharted 4 Game Director Justin Richmond Leaves Naughty Dog...what in the heck is going on here?

There are a slew of layoffs every quarter in the games industry since forever. Games get finished or scrapped and people are no longer needed. It seems every time it happens people think the industry is coming to an end when it's just the nature of the industry.

with the emergence of kickstarter success stories and the support for indie titles on all platforms (steam early access, psn, xbox live, etc.) it is just logical that capable employees of big studios do want to try out new options, may it be founding a new studio or maybe just accepting another tempting offer...

i am not an insider but with sony's support for the indie studios, i just do not think that sony is not showing the same passion for their in-house developers...

LINK

they lost alot of money, things are changing, thats all, I mean come on they have alot of first party companies who aren't producing much, for them it isn't worth it, it's either top quality or nothing, they need to sort they stuff out to keep delivering, that's all.

I do not see it as Sony saving money. Sony laid off a lot of employees at Santa Monica, but it is also hiring new people on as well. I think Santa Monica wants to do something different than continue making God of War so it the studio got rid of all the people who specialize in making hack n slash games in order to make something else. Naughty Dog also faced a lot of departures moving from PS2 to PS3 so it was only natural this would happen again going from PS3 to PS4. Sony wants to continue making Uncharted games, and maybe people like Amy Hennig do no want to do that anymore since they spent half a decade making the PS3 trilogy. We do not know what games Sony's other studios are working on. Guerrilla Games still has another title in the making that no one knows about. No one knows what Media Molecule has been up to other than Tearaway. With Ratchet and Sly movies coming out, there is no doubt more games in these franchises are on the way. Most titles are in development for PS4, so I do not see all the hate to be honest. It is not like the other console makers have a slew of games on the horizon.

No one knows what Microsoft has outside of Halo for 2015. All NIntendo has been talking about is Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros. One of these games does not have a firm release date. When a person leaves a company, another one will take his or her place. David Jaffe left Sony after creating God of War 1 and Cory Barlog took his place. Once Cory left, then Stig took over. Now Cory is back again. It is the cycle of life.

It really saddens me about that space game Santa Monica was working on and they just scrapped it. It makes you wonder why they felt it was not worth the time to finish.