Beyond the general trend in the video game industry. This is already the 2nd wave of layoffs for PlayStation and the studio closures are in addition to the other studios already closed by Playstation: London Studios, Pixelopus, Japan Studio, Liverpool Studio, Manchester Studio, etc.
This is a problem that goes beyond the current trend and reveals a fundamental problem. They are paying for strategic errors and a lack of market anticipation, they have also lost 10 billion on the stock market following announcements of lower margins and failure to achieve objectives?
Now the sudden change in strategy started by Jim Ryan towards more service games, more PC games and fewer AAA games is not reassuring for the market or for the players. Playstation is heading into an area that they have mastered poorly, just look at their PC ports, and the lack of AAA games which is their trademark is already being felt. Since the start of this generation of consoles, they have focused on hardware with first the PS5, the PSVR2 (which is clearly abandoned), the PS5 slim, the PS portal, headphones, accessories, etc... BUT they have released very few games from their internal studios apart from sequels and remakes, which ends up annoying fans.
They compensate with temporary exclusives of third party games, but which for the most part do not compensate for the quality of first party games.
Encouraged by the success of helldivers 2, they will continue on this path, more service games to the detriment of large single-player games. But service games are more the preserve of PC players and less of PlayStation console players, many of whom do not like this type of game.
PlayStation console players have been neglected since the start of this generation and it's a safe bet that this isn't about to change with this new strategy.
For comparison, in 2024 alone, Xbox is releasing more exclusive games from internal studios and some third-party exclusives like: Hellblade II, Stalker 2, Diablo IV, Avowed, Flight, Simulator 2024, Indiana Jones
Flintlock, Towerborne
Ara, Ark II, age of mythology. For its part, PlayStation will not release any first party games until March 2025 according to the CEO of Sony. The difference is striking.
Xbox creates content (new games, new licenses, varied games for all tastes), while PlayStation sells consoles. I'm exaggerating the line a little but that's it.
Fortunately Xbox sends small games like pentiment or old service games like sea of thieves (which is 6 years old) but it's not enough, Xbox will never send big system seller exclusive games like indiana jones, starfield, hellblade2, gears 6, fable, avowed, perfect dark, blade, etc....
Honestly, as players on all consoles, my PS5 is gathering dust, I mainly play on Xbox series X + gamepass because there is always something new, first party or third party day one games.
The future of the PlayStation seems really bad to me