PS5 Announcement and Employee Layoffs Suspiciously Timed

By now you’re probably aware of the recent news from Sony announcing that the PS5 is releasing Holiday 2020 which is between October and December that year, I’d put my money on a November release seeing as the previous consoles have been released around that time.

What you may not be so familiar with however is the news that Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe was hit with significant layoffs around the same time as the announcements with reports that employees are being asked to re-interview for positions that they already had with one employee taking to twitter to say:

“I was part of the creative services team at #PlayStation that got #laidoff today. This group of talented & passionate people are out of a job & now #lookingforwork. If you’re hiring for project coordinators, managers, & designers please post below!”

It wouldn’t take much of a leap for people to figure out that the recent PS5 announcement was announced solely to mitigate the coverage of these layoffs which is quite frankly an underhanded move on Sony’s part, clever, but underhanded.

There’s been some additional reports that the SIE US branch who were responsible for the announcement also failed to inform the SIE Europe branch with employees in Europe not finding out about the announcement until after the report came out, it’s clear the Sony is experiencing some internal conflict right now and with the PS5 in a crucial time of development it may not look so good for Sony in the near future.