Sony's CEO Says Layoffs Were Necessary to Run a Sustainable Business

Hermen Hulst commented on the cuts in a recent interview.

In a recent interview, Sony Interactive Entertainment co-CEO Hermen Hulst commented on the massive layoffs that the company had, saying that the hard decision is driven by the need to "run a sustainable business."

When asked about the company's plans and perspectives after rounds of layoffs, taking Concord offline, and additional cuts at Bungie, Hulst said (via Variety): "It's our duty to look at our resource planning, and make sure that we run a sustainable business. That's part of being CEO. We never take that lightly, because we know these people personally, and it's very close to our hearts and the teams and good working atmospheres. But yes, we've had some layoffs."

Hulst continued, saying that PlayStation had grown "tremendously" on the content side, as well as in the terms of employment: "And that is organic growth that our existing teams, I think, hired quite aggressively, as well as through M&A. So the organization, the employment is much greater now than it was, let’s say, for example, five years ago."

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Before, Sony announced the layoff of 900 employees, constituting roughly 8% of its global workforce, across teams from the Americas, EMEA, Japan, and APAC. Recently released Sony's Concord, a first-person shooter that wasn't received well and had no more than 700 concurrent players on Steam over the first few days after the release, was shut down just two weeks after its official release.

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Anonymous user
Hulst could have easily given them another project which less strings attached to create something more along the lines of what PlayStation fans want instead of being told what we want to play. You can't storm the office and say you're going to make this kind of game and do it exactly how we want it to be and when it fails seem surprised by that. That's what PlayStation seems to have done. "We know the fans don't want it, but you're gonna make a Live Service (or) Game as a Service Game. You're also going to include woke attributes into the game, even though we don't really care about any of that but it's hopefully an audience we can draw from" which is stupid because you're risking making an even bigger uproar by A) People that don't want to be preached to or B) Being bullied into accepting something that isn't that important and doesn't matter and doesn't need to be paraded into receiving any kind of attention. Bill, for example, in The Last of Us, you have noticed but was there and life went on. By The Last of Us Part II, they got away with all of it the first time so the second time they went all out and paraded and forced it on the gamer, contrary to what those groups of people are preaching about and arguing for.

Don't tell them how and what to make and then when it fails blame them. We all know studios trip up, people make mistakes, so let them try again, the second time they could make something totally different, something that is completely unique and blow the doors off, but you didn't let them. I mean, none of your other studios have anything coming out any time soon.... What're they doing (looks at watch) five years in. Insomniac are the only ones but they've become Marvel tools and we'll never see the creativity that comes from Marcus Smith. I guess some no namer couldn't even stand it and left for a Microsoft studio (astoundingly) to work on Perfect Dark that's been in development hell.

Writing like I think Herman Hulst or someone from PlayStation is actually going to read it and care. Bottom line, Hulst is a moron, has no idea what he's doing and he and Jim Ryan and single handedly dismantling everything Tretton, House, and Harai built. Shawn Layden could've been the jump start being Japans puppet to start with.

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Anonymous user
·8 hours ago·

Sony's CEO Says Layoffs Were Necessary to Run a Sustainable Business

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