You are not wrong.  I've worked for a few billion dollar annual profit companies....  every year is "how do we make more."

I'm starting to feel a bit numb with all the layoffs that is happening all around the industry.
Hopefully some of the folks that lose their jobs try to build new exiting studios. I'd want something good to come from this rather depressing downsizing trend.

The model Sony/MS chose to pursue is not sustainable and honestly for consumers who cheer that on they should get a reality check that games honestly of that scale should cost more.

The Tekken producer said last week game costs today are 10x more than the 90s, but a $50 Playstation game circa 1997 would be like $85+ and that's only accounting for inflation *alone*. That doesn't even touch the fact that the budget is 10x higher. There's a fair case these games should be a costing $100+ each. Now all of the sudden those same people cheerleading never ending expansion in budgets would suddenly get a reality check in their own wallet and probably start complaining very loudly about game costs.

It's also no wonder most games today are really just PS4-tier titles with things like ray tracing and a few other effects added on top. Which honestly is a lot smarter than bankrupting your studio and having several hundred people lose their jobs, for what? So "Little Timmy" can have light beams coming through the fog and more bushes in the background of a game that otherwise plays exactly the same? Like this shit is just stupid, it's so not worth it. Even PS4 tier can bankrupt a studio and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create.  God Of War 2018 and Horizon: Forbidden West (which looks as good as anything else on the PS5 but was developed as PS4 game as well) cost $200+ million even before marketing costs. And those games get heavily bundled with PS4/5 hardware to boost their numbers, what if you're just a normal 3rd party trying to make a game without benefit of that? Even a "PS4 level" high end game could cost clear of a $100+ million, maybe even $200 million. 

Sony may be turning a profit but even they know their setup is a bad one which is why their new president is already crowing about wanting out of the current business model. The userbase for Playstation/XBox consoles is not growing, it's the same or even smaller than what the PS2/GCN/XBox had 20 years ago, but you have development costs that are far higher, that isn't a good formula.

True. It's because inflation exists. Not growing means the money you have is going to be worth less over time. Just like everyone would like to see their paycheck increase at minimal to offset inflation, so do investors when it comes to their stock.

Problem though is that infinite growth for everybody and every company is pretty much impossible, so it's a rat race to get ahead and stay ahead. And that means unfortunately some companies will end up behaving as rats, especially towards their workers.

When the Sony "They're Doing Great!" Playstation division has shut down 4 studios in 4 years time ... you know the business model has big problems. 

Narrative Director and Writer for Insomniac's Spider-Man games. What a grim anniversary.

It honestly makes the situation all the more confusing. Especially with major studios like Insomniac and Guerrilla being hit. I think Guerrilla was confirmed to have lost 10% of their workforce. 

Insomniac having the studios biggest launch in their history. 

We don't know on what type of games they where working on perhaps these people where working on projects Sony thinks are not being able to generate big numbers. But I agree it's odd, I can get behind Naughty Dog, due to wasting time and money on Factions, but especially Insomniac made Sony a lot of money this gen. Luckily Santa Monica isn't downsized even though they basically became twice as big these last few years. Studios like Bluepoint, Suckerpunch, Bend and Housemarque also seemed to be spared for now, though with a new CEO taking over we can't be sure these are the final cuts.

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.

This message makes it sound like Insomniac were hit particularly hard.