What is happening?

As I recall naughty dog is in United States?

you sound butt hurt

Every time one of these happens and Team Ico continues being a thing is a day I continue to get annoyed.

To be fair, I've thought for a while that London Studio needed trimming. When hyper-productive studios like Santa Monica were getting trimmed and London kept chugging along putting bombs like Wonderbook & Eyepet out, I wondered how long it would be.

Cambridge & Evolution, I actually thought were prime candidates for closing. Especially Cambridge who I presumed wouldn't have a place after Sony made it quite clear that they don't care about Vita. So if it saves them from that, then I welcome these changes. They were a pretty small studio anyway, though, so I wonder what size of a team they actually have left.

Very sad that it's had to come to this, though. I always thought Sony's greatest strength of the last generation was their WWS and to see it gutted like this, worldwide, is saddening. I'm guessing that this because we're going to see more of a move towards second-party partnerships while keeping the internal workforce at a minimum, but still. All the studios that have been hit with layoffs have done their part to support Sony's hardware and bring in new consumers, so it's very sad to see.

(I'm also a bit miffed because clearly SCE is performing well at the moment on the back of PS4. I'd have thought cutbacks in other sectors would've been a smarter decision, rather than the one division which has a chance of running away with things in the market it's in, but I guess things really are that bad at Sony at the moment. Still, for anyone saying that Kaz "isn't doing enough"... I really beg to differ)

LOL bolded is true and funny/sad.

Hope these people land on their feet somewhere. Very strange to see Evolution getting layoffs with all the delays Driveclub has seen. Can't say I have played a thing SCE London has made, don't they do all the Move/casual crap? Cambridge made some good games before they became Guerrilla imho.

How does this affect PS4 owners gaming though? (/Snark)

Make no mistake, if Sony weren't broke, they wouldn't be laying these people off. They might be hiring a few more people, but they are laying off way more than they are hiring. The hires might just be to make 90% of fans say 'They're not laying off tons of people, just letting go of the bad people and bringing in new people.'

Sony is in dire financial straits.

Got a feeling that when The Last Guardian is finally released (Sometime in 2018!), Team ICO is getting put into the ground.

Not one single new release from them in 9 Years is simply unacceptable. I think the only reason we arent seeing layoffs at Team ICO is because they want Trico out as quick as possible, so that they can shut it down.

SCEJ just needs a massive overhaul IMO.

it's quite sad some people are trying to spin this into console wars...even some so called business experts

Layoffs happen. Sony first party is a large. I was surprised they hadn't done any layoffs at GG and Evolution before this. These studios haven't done a good job with their output in recent years. it sucks but that's just how a business is. Sometimes restructuring is needed to move forward. With the financial release coming up soon they will try and get all of this done by then.

About Team ICO, afaik it's a tiny studio that doesn't really cost sony much. But after TLG ships I'm sure they will have some restructuring as well, just as SCEJ had some a while a back

All that said I wish those affected the best of luck and hopefully they will land new jobs asap

Why? PS brand is on the rise.....and they are downsizing? wtf Sony.

Sony has shed 50% of its assets in the last 2 years. If they do that again in the next 2 years, there'll be nothing left.

Microsoft is worth more than it ever was, and has so much money they could make 300 Lord of the Rings triologies. Literally. I'm just saying, MS can close studios and the smart assumption would be that the studio is underperforming. Sony has laid off THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of people and sold billions of dollars worth of buildings and shuttered several divisions in the last few years, because they are short on money. I hope they can turn it around. Because right now they could win the console war and still need to sell off the Playstation brand and declare bankruptcy if things don't work out with their phones, etc.

Well I'm not surprised about Evolution getting layoffs, Sony can't be happy with what's going on with Driveclub. I wouldn't be surprised to see the studio shut down. Too bad about Guerrilla Cambridge, Sony has truly given up on supporting the Vita.