Sony recently closed its San Diego public-relations department, and one of the employees who lost his job has some tough words for the gaming-hardware giant.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":538091,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"C"}']You have to wonder what the hell PlayStation was thinking laying off more than half of their software PR team going into the holiday season.
— Will Powers (@WillJPowers) September 24, 2012
That was just the beginning of the criticisms Powers leveled against Sony. It’s not surprising that someone would voice a damning appraisal of the company that just laid them off, but Powers’s issues with Sony Computer Entertainment echo much of the recent critiques lobbed at the corporation. Many fans, for example, question Sony’s decision to release a new PlayStation 3 without dropping the price just as Nintendo is about to debut a new console.
“In typical fashion they’re sending titles out to die, because they have no PR support,” Powers wrote on Twitter. He said he was specifically referring to Little Big Planet Karting, Sports Champions 2, and the Wonderbook. While it’s hard to tell for sure, anticipation for those games does appear to be muted. It’s impossible to tell, however, if that’s because Sony isn’t supporting them or if gamers just aren’t interested in them.
Powers, who is best known for winning the first season of Sony’s reality competition show The Tester, sympathized with the PR agents left at Sony saying that their workload has now doubled.
“Laying off [PR] to cut costs makes no sense,” Powers wrote. “Already, they outsourced entirely too much work to overpriced agencies, so laying off is only going to exacerbate an existing problem.”
Sony is having a rough time financially. The company’s television division is struggling to keep up with Samsung. It’s spending money to restructure into “one Sony” under chief executive officer Kaz Hirai’s orders. Sony Computer Entertainment, the gaming division, lost $45 million alone in its last quarterly report.
“Sony in general is serving too many masters,” Powers wrote. “Each company should operate autonomously. PlayStation shouldn’t suffer because TVs are overpriced.”
GamesBeat sent a request to Sony to speak about Powers’ Tweets, but the publisher hasn’t responded at the time of this post.