Layoffs At Sony Interactive Europe

karmakid

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Sep 11, 2013
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According to people with knowledge of the situation, American PlayStation directors visited Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe (SIEE) in London on Tuesday to announce the restructure of several divisions, including marketing and PR.

Affected employees were then given notice and meetings were set for those required to re-interview for their jobs.

There were also a number of layoffs in the US-based creative services team, with one affected employee writing on Twitter: “I hate that this is going to be drowned by the PS5 announcement.”

PlayStation’s North American arm, Sony Interactive Entertainment America (SIEA) has seen its influence grow significantly in the past year, VGC was told, as the platform holder moves further towards a central, globalised structure.

Previously PlayStation’s regional arms were able to act autonomously, signing their own games and setting their own marketing budgets.

This allowed the company to specifically cater to its own audiences: PlayStation Move was marketed more heavily in Europe, for example, while Drive Club wasn’t in the US. This had the downside of creating a messy overall operation, which some publishers are said to have been frustrated with in the past.
 
Odd considering how successful Sony's European team have made their consoles in the region
 
It's sad but when you restructure and consolidate things like this happen, funny how Jim Ryan is the one in charge but the staff in Europe are the ones being laid off. Hopefully those who've lost their jobs will find work soon.
 
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According to people with knowledge of the situation, American PlayStation directors visited Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe (SIEE) in London on Tuesday to announce the restructure of several divisions, including marketing and PR.

Affected employees were then given notice and meetings were set for those required to re-interview for their jobs.

There were also a number of layoffs in the US-based creative services team, with one affected employee writing on Twitter: “I hate that this is going to be drowned by the PS5 announcement.”

PlayStation’s North American arm, Sony Interactive Entertainment America (SIEA) has seen its influence grow significantly in the past year, VGC was told, as the platform holder moves further towards a central, globalised structure.

Previously PlayStation’s regional arms were able to act autonomously, signing their own games and setting their own marketing budgets.

This allowed the company to specifically cater to its own audiences: PlayStation Move was marketed more heavily in Europe, for example, while Drive Club wasn’t in the US. This had the downside of creating a messy overall operation, which some publishers are said to have been frustrated with in the past.


That employee that hates that the PS5 is going to take away from the story of his layoff cracks me up! I have been laid off twice in the past and we got no media attention at all so why the F does he think he deserves it? Is it so he can get a bunch of "I'm sorry" tweets sent to him from people he doesn't know?

People get laid off every day, it's a s*** feeling but when departments are combined and you have redundancies the company is almost always going to eliminate those positions.
 
Playstation is going for a more global appeal and a focus on the global market rather than individual market. It will be interesting to see how this plays out each branch knows its market better than anyone but this should lead to a more coherent marketing strategy where games see equal distribution of marketing and not distorted like stuff like Driveclub and Gravity Rush. I think in general you will see SIE take a more global focus on marketing but also games no longer will you see Japan Studio get away with anime games which have little to no appeal in the US or Europe.