Are we going to talk about Sony laying off people?

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Was on the PT board

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...........why?

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and, most significantly, PlayStation's London studio.

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In the past 10 years that studio has worked on PS4 and PSVR games. No PS5 or PSVR 2 games. It really sucks for the people who worked there, but it's not surprising that Sony would close down the studio.

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...........why?

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For some, it's used as another reason to bash Biden's economic policies.

There's another aspect which is a bit more subtle and that's the discussion of possible manipulation of employment data numbers to make the economy look better than it may actually be. These tech layoffs have been coming large and fast but get only a nod's worth of a mention in the news and then are quickly forgotten.

Only the PT could find a way to blame the US president for a Japanese company cutting jobs, predominantly outside of the US, because not enough people are buying video game consoles.

You would be hard pressed to make this shite up

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Earlier this month, Sony admitted sales of the PS5 during the crucial holiday quarter had failed to meet expectations

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I'm still happily playing PS4 and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. PS5 doesn't have many big exclusives. The only one I can think of right now I would want to play is Spiderman 2.

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In the past 10 years that studio has worked on PS4 and PSVR games. No PS5 or PSVR 2 games. It really sucks for the people who worked there, but it's not surprising that Sony would close down the studio

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Surly no one would leave out such important details. Sony is failing! They are shutting down a thing nobody cares about!

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You would be hard pressed to make this shite up

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You actually made a pretty good argument for Bidenflation being partly to blame:

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blame the US president for a Japanese company cutting jobs, predominantly outside of the US, because not enough people are buying video game consoles.

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Reassigning these people to work on future projects would have been a good sign.

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I don't think it has to be a sign of anything. PS4's days are numbered and PSVR is out. You can't reassign them when the other things are fully staffed. Especially not 900 people and in London, where presumably there is nothing to reassign them to there.

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I don't think it has to be a sign of anything. PS4's days are number and PSVR is out. You can reassign them when the other things are fully staffed.

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I dunno man. Sony needs to be putting more investment into first party studios. They have nothing coming out this year and only released one game last year. For a brand that is totally reliant on exclusives, it's hard to see positives for PlayStation currently.

ETA: By "reassign," I don't necessarily mean move them to new studios. Reassigning could also mean having them develop and work on new IP, which is something PlayStation clearly needs.

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Is there a way to determine what percentage of sales were expected in the US in that same time frame and if that contributed to the lack of overall sales as a whole? If so, then I would say fair game.

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Looks like the entirety of North America accounts for 39% of total PS5 sales since release. Looks like the US accounts for roughly 80% of NA sales, so the US likely accounts for about 31% of total PS5 sales. With the US being a very wealthy market, we tend to be early adopters on the tech curve with less developed countries lagging behind.

Considering that projected worldwide sales numbers appear to have been revised down something like 20%, no, it’s not really reasonable to blame any one country, including the US, unless someone out there has data showing that the US only purchased something along the lines of 20% of expected sales, which is just outlandish.

The PS5 just isn’t a must have console. Especially with the rise of powerful handheld consoles like the Steamdeck, Sony needs to do something to right the ship, asap.

And because we’re not on the PT, I’ll refrain from going into any detail into just how comical it is to me that people seem to utterly abrogate any responsibility their favored prior presidents have in causing our current inflationary environment with their own massive deficit spending and artificially depressed interest rates.