| Pemalite said: Microsoft's Market cap is over $3 trillion. |
MS also has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs the past few years.
MS is doing great, and it still isn't quite enough.
| kazuyamishima said: Budgets for PS Games have been increasing a lot, especially the licensing ones. But the Insomniac leak gave us a lot of info, it seems that PS first party games make profit and some more. But 8% of their workforce is something significant tho. |
A lot of these studios are making money. SIE as a whole is making money.
The big issue is that profits are slim. SIE's profit margin is like 5% right now. This is in a peak console year, a few years from the next console launch which tends to lose money. Compare that margin to Nintendo at like 30%. EA is apparently like 15%.
AAA budgets are becoming difficult, and it's taking longer to launch. So now your $300 million investment takes 6 years, before you start seeing a return. They generally do still make money. But Sony's paying to cover hardware costs, they're paying for investments for studios that have yet to make money. They're paying for studios that are a few years away from launching their next game. They're paying for R&D. They're paying for third party support that doesn't directly support themselves.
So you cut the projects that are risky or are very far off. You cut back some team sizes; try to make a game with 300 people instead of 400.
| Qwark said: I expect that to be the case, a third round of layoffs will most likely occur in the second half of this year. In that round I expect them to close Media Molecule. |
It seems pretty clear that Media Molecule is on a short list, but why are these likely?
