There has been a lot of talk lately of lay-offs in the gaming industry ever since the whole OnLive incident, from Popcap Games laying off staff to EA possibly being up for sale. In a bit of an interesting move, while Sony is really pushing their mobile gaming presence with Playstation Mobile, they have decided to lay off 1,000 staff while moving their headquarters to Tokyo.
The move is apparently in order to turn around Sony’s dwindling fortunes in the smartphone market. Should you be worried about this? Probably not. While Sony makes moves in the mobile gaming industry, these lay-offs are more a part of the reorganizing of the company after Sony bought out the rest of Sony Ericsson, acquiring the last 50% of the company to bring it under one brand, Sony.
From there, Sony is planning to move their headquarters to Tokyo and out of Sweden. The Sweden office, however, will not be closed and will still be operational with 2,000 staff on board. The whole plan is to reduce costs and make Sony more profitable, at least regarding their mobile devices and their market share in that department.
All of this shouldn’t affect Sony’s Playstation Mobile service or future Playstation Certified devices. However, Sony is looking to make an impact in terms of future mobile devices released by the company so it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Website Referenced: PC World
