Well they sure ain't gonna buy any more studios for a while.

The gaming division will not get axed, whatever its losses right now, they are miniscule compared to their TV division.

Who said that?

@WiiStation360: That's just SCEE's PR, it doesn't even concern the whole of SCE... More official sources say otherwise (a planned headcount reduction).

The gaming division is losing a lot of money. Unlike Microsoft, Sony is not in a position to subsidize the Playstation.

The gaming division has the cost structure of the haydays of the SP2 with its massive sales. This cost structure is outdated for the current realities and Sony's position in the market.

The overhead in their cost structure means that they are very sensitive to sales revenue reduction or currency exchange changes because these overhead costs stay fixed regardless of the sales.

Sony must review all aspects of the gaming business to ensure its return to profitability. The economic environment is not improving for Sony. Recession means less premium product sales. If Sony will not be taking steps now to adjust their business model, pricing and cost structure then they will continue to lose money. Not being able to reach break even point in gaming very soon may lead to much harsher steps later on, when things are reaching desperation point.

I'm glad you said "for now".  Less than a month before I was laid off from my job back at the beginning of 2007, we were all told by our boss that our department still had 5 years of projects to complete if we stopped accepting new projects.  This can change.  That's the reality of business world.  The cold, hard reality.  And unless you've been a part of it or paid close attention to it, then it may be hard for you to realize that companies will very rarely tip their hand about layoffs to their employees.

I think by law (or at least by ethical codes) they can't talk about layoffs publically before employees have been told about it. Since this is all still pretty recent news, they probably don't even have defined plans yet, much less went through all the necessary steps to make the announcement public.

Notice how we first heard about Sony's 16,000 layoffs back in December, and today we still don't know all the products that those concern.

Am i the only one seeing " Sony Games Division Loses To Increase by $337Million" as " Sony Games Division Loses To Increase by LeetMillion"


lol a little geeky maybe

I don't think it's illegal to tell the public about layoffs before you tell the employees (at least not in the U.S.), but it is a dick move.

On the other hand, that's become something of big business' specialty, so who's to say?

yea pretty sure no law about saying when or who is getting layed off. But I don't know of any company that would tell their employees that they are getting fired before they do.

if you were working for a company and knew your division was getting canned in a couple months what would your work ethic be like. I sure as hell would do nothing and just show up to work and get paid. Hell what they gonna do "fire me" I'm already gonna be fired in a month or two anyway.

So obviously Sony is gonna deny all statements/articles claiming so and so division is gonna be loosing so many jobs. They want their workers to work.

Funny.

You can replace Sony with Sega, Microsoft with Sony, Playstation with Saturn and you get the situation of a decade ago.