Horizon Dev Reportedly Loses 10% of Staff After PlayStation Layoffs

I wonder what the gaming industry will look like at the end of this year.

The layoffs and retrenchments just continue to pile up, and we're not even past the first quarter of the year yet.

I am one of the lucky ones that can stay but it’s terrible for everyone what happened, although there is nothing to do against this 🙌🏻

There hasn’t been any mention of Santa Monica or Sucker Punch. Has these 2 studios been unaffected I wonder?

I just wish the leaders were held accountable for their poor choices, not the talent.

If you have an unsustainable business model that is the leadership’s fault. If you aren’t getting what you need from talent, that is leadership’s fault.

But it’s always the heart of the organization — line workers, in this case a community manager wtf — who gets shown the door.

@Bionic-Spencer i don't think so. It looks like only the studios working on live service titles were affected. The games we know they cancelled seem to be all live service: tlou online, London's game, and twisted metal.

@N1ghtW1ng i predict alot ai use and outsourcing to cheap labor countries like China and India. I know people call for unionization, but I think that would cause a lot more outsourcing.

@Bionic-Spencer I would assume that the California layoffs must've been focused on Insomniac and ND.
Santa Monica is far too successful for PlayStation especially since as far as we know their games don't seem to go too over budget.
Sucker Punch, Haven, Bend and Firewalk must be too deep in development to do any major layoffs right now which would affect release schedules.

@Americansamurai1 it already has. Nintendo basically live off contract workers or green badges as they're known in the US. Microsoft only use contract workers as well.

The mistreatment and crunch has moved from actual employee to contractors and outsource staff instead. Malaysia, India and China are the main areas for this. Poor wages, poor hours, bad deadlines.

@breakneck yeah I think we will see Sony heading in this direction. I know alot of people complain about Jim Ryan and not saying he didn't deserve it, but now they have a finance person in charge and alot of "dead weight" is going to be cut. Tighter deadlines and tight milestones are going to happen.

@breakneck Santa Monica also hold Sony's most important ip. The god of war series keeps getting more popular and if the show hits sales are only going to go up.

Sony is a game or two away from needing to reach out to Apple or Google and asking for some money. Profits this small with PS5 is only going to get worse with PS6. Clearly PS6 titles will be expensive to make with all the more attention to detail from dev’s. Single player games are hard to profit from after the initial release. Maybe PS6 goes all digital to kill off second hand game use, but not sure even that would be enough to offset their profits as most PS5 games are sold digitally now. Interesting times ahead. But they are on thin ice and have to get all the upcoming PS5 releases right. Which they are capable of. This year is about to get wild some more i think.

Meanwhile Nintendo is sitting back making games that barely reach 30fps on old tech and counting money all the way to the bank. Shows how taxing trying to reach 4K/60 is and maybe smaller games at 1440P 60fps is the target we should have been aiming for all along.

Did they really need a senior community manager for a singleplayer series to begin with?

No one is safe it seems.
I feel it was a mistake shutting some of the smaller studios down as they were great at releasing games in between the big AAA titles.
Obviously the Live Services would have taken their places but a lot of them have now been cancelled.
Now we are left with each AAA needing the same budget as a Hollywood movie and a dev time of at least 5 years. The bubble has to burst at some point.

@HonestHick and selling their 7 years old hardware with a full MSRP price since it came out. On the other hand, Sony has to cut PS5 price this year to make a room for the pricier PS5 Pro (just like they did with PS4).

@N1ghtW1ng the forced exodus from first party and major publishers will result in new studios and publishers to form. Likely resulting in a jarring effect that should shake us free from our current stagnation.

That's the upside. Downside, is fewer releases.

@koffing
To be honest, it is a perfectly good job done when those at the top hire more people during good times when it is an investment for the business, and release people when there is not the demand to sustain those numbers. May sound harsh, but that’s the reality.

To be fair if it played at like a kinda red dead online, think there could've been great potential in a horizon mmo/live service game

@HonestHick Google? The one company that has multiple problems with their AI Gemini or Bard? No chance! (90 billion USD write off on their stock)

I don’t think Apple is interested in such low profit margins. Also if they were interested they would already be in the market right now!

Lastly, not only Sony’s margins are thin. I expect that to be the same for Microsoft. Otherwise they wouldn’t release 4 titles on other platforms (sorry had to say this as you are more a Xbox guy 😛)

@ZeD Hopefully the bubble bursts! I miss the times when Ubisoft was known for Rayman (the first one was magical). Also games like Sly Cooper, Oddworld and Spyro can come back (instead of the ultra realistic graphics)

@AdamNovice It's a valid question, why would you need to keep a community engaged for a single player game?

Yes, it sucks that more people have been layed off, but it's also a part of this industry - developers hire staff to work projects, and then lay them off once the project is done. The pandemic lock-downs simply amplified the amount of staff hired due to more demand for digital content and services.

What I'd like to see in these articles is a tally of what the developers staffing levels were pre-pandemic vs. the amount of staff layed off. Bungie for instance layed off 100 staff, yet had increased their staff levels by around 25% since Covid lockdowns started.

Awful news. I am also surprised Guerilla is much smaller than I thought before the layoffs considering they both develop Sony's main engine and develop games.

@Dr_ENT yeah Nintendo sure does get away with premium pricing on hardware that is pennies on the dollar compared to the competitors. But man is it working out well for them at the moment. I am sure Switch 2 might change their profit level a little in the beginning but not by much. This is how Nintendo continues to sit back and let Sony and MS go to battle and them have the marketshare and money to themselves.

@Sanquine i agree google is an odd choice if Sony ever teamed up with them as google loves to start a project and then axe it within 2 years if it ain’t making loads of money. However PS is a worldwide known seller and has mindshare. Apple i think would love to be in gaming but not have to build it from the ground up as the big 3 are just to established. Apple does well enough with mobile games and are starting to see a few AAA games come to them. So they are a wild card if they would be willing to back a PS and go all in on gaming. MS also has thin margins and let’s be honest is great and shooting them selves in the foot. However they have the money to recover from their bullets to their toes. Sony is just know after all this time of doing it right starting to aim rounds into their feet and they don’t have the capital to afford such mistakes. That alone makes me think this year and beyond could get even more interesting if things don’t change for the better soon.

Really love the Horizon community so seeing this one hurts. Especially when it's someone who clearly, genuinely cared about their role and what they were doing.

@HonestHick Agree about Sony not having the money to afford mistakes. MS can fund the whole gaming industry with their profits from Azure alone.

@N1ghtW1ng
Full of remasters, remakes, more AA to AAA ish type games and some GAAS thrown in.
To me not great as I thrive on big AAA single player campaign games, what Sony do the best along with Nintendo.

All these shakeups could spell a miserable time. Especially the fact that some of our best stories (outspoken or otherwise) right now are in the videogame industry. Yet, a lot of the smaller games are getting cut before even getting a chance.. I’d be devastated to see my art be put out to pasture before it crawled out of its mother like Jim Carrey.

@Sanquine for sure they can. I think Sony will get it figured out. They have known of these issues for a long time. The thing is their fan base wants big AAA single player games. Which is fine but Sony is going to need some sort of service game that makes constant money. They wanted to take a try at that and i think are realizing they don’t have the talent that makes those types of games. They have the attention to detail story telling talent in house. They went to get Bungie as help with online gaming and so far i think that hasn’t played out the way they wished.

@HonestHick i'm surprised people are upset at this , they are getting what they want, less live service games , and a refocus more on single player games. i feel like with the high costs of games sony is playing it too safe though , and making the games take a lil more time then it should. but i'm sure they'll be fine once they announce the games they've been working on over the years , people will forget all about this.

All of these layoffs, and rumors circling of Media Molecule being possibly closed down, are really depressing.

@twitchtvpat i agree that most PS fans will be happy to hear less online games. I for one was excited to finally get something that wasn’t a 3rd person action adventure title. The PS4 got boring to me with its lack of variety. But yes die hard PS fans will be happy with this news once the games come. But… when are they coming? How much time did these cancelled live service games take away from some of the bigger titles thats not Marvel? My only issue is i have said for years on here that single player gaming isn’t dead but it’s not as profitable as one would hope or think. I got blasted by people with look at all the sales numbers for these titles. This is kind of me flexing on saying the money wasn’t as right all along as one would think. Look at MS poor first party output last gen and most of this gen, lagged behind PS in sales 2-1, 3-1 and yet the money wasn’t that far of a gap. Cause of games like Minecraft and others. I think Sony should still try here and there at a big money making online game. Just my 2 cents and i could be wrong, but these numbers are speaking to what i have been saying for a while. Btw I’m an accountant in life. Numbers and money are my thing 😊

@Sanquine

Microsoft makes $211 billion a year in revenue. Sony makes $91 billion.
Of-course Microsoft is almost double Sony's, but it's not like Sony is a poor company who can't afford some risk or mistakes. People often forget how big sony is in markers outside of Playstation.

For their gaming divisions, i think they are p[retty much on par with eachother.

@HonestHick i feel the only people that can actually answer that question is the people who are making these games. trust me , i just like you and many other people really want to see what these games they've been working on are. i think we'll see them sooner then later. its either we get to see what they've been working on and they could have , but its like these games are 3-4 years off. or they work on them and say this is what we've been working on and its out in 6 months. personally i'd rather the short wait after the announcement. and to be fair sony this gen hasn't really been announcing games that aren't ready to be announced like they have in the past.

@Skeletor85 I dont know how it works but why don't companies just lower their pay like Nintendo does or is it just the matter of having the cost of things not go up?

@twitchtvpat yeah thats a good point. They are trying to show it and release it much sooner than they did last gen. Which is cool. I know they have some great stuff in the pipeline. Just not sure when we will see it. Wolverine will be really good i am sure. Other than that i suppose we can expect to see the Last of Us 3 sometime before the PS6. Not sure what else really.

@HonestHick it sounds like they have something they've been working on before last of us 3 which could be a new ip. i know last of us 2 gets a lot of hate , but i've been replaying it again on ps5. which i put everything else on halt till i finish final fantasy 7 rebirth lol, which is why i'm not exactly too worried about other games since it will take me forever to finish an 100+ hr game these days.

I am finishing up FF16 on PS5 then i will buy last of us part 2. Never played it. Beat the first one around 4 times now between all the releases. Love it. Think it’s one of the top 10 best games ever made. Part 2 was me bored with PS4 and just held off. Was happy to see the PS5 version and will 100% buy it and beat it. I am normally not a JRPG turn base guy. But i have a lot of love and respect for what FF is and represents. So when i heard FF16 was action and not turn based. I snagged it on Black Friday for $40 and so far i am really enjoying it. Rebirth is probably not in the cards for me but again i have respect for it cause i know it’s great. Glad to see you are enjoying it and no matter how long it takes you to finish it the journey is to enjoy it along the way. 😊

The future belongs to games with simpler graphics then.

@Marquez Lol, it's because the people making the cuts are the people at the top. They look after their own, they don't cut their roles when they can let go of the people actually doing the work instead. The same reason why time and time again, we will see companies have rounds of layoffs, followed by news of the top brass receiving obscene bonuses.