In a letter to employees yesterday afternoon and subsequently leaked to gamesindustry.biz, David Reevs, head honcho of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has shocked staff by announcing there may be a compulsory cut in the workforce.

The letter begins 'In order to further our market leadership we sometimes have to make difficult business decisions. The management of the company has concluded that we need to change our structure, streamline and strengthen our business operations - and that our cost base needs to be significantly reduced.'

'Regrettably, we must also now look at the possibility of making compulsory redundancies in the UK offices, in WWS studios in Europe and in our territory offices. Staff across all areas of the business are likely to be affected.'

BY the end of wednesday 17th April, SCEE will issue all members of staff with a letter informing them of whether or not they are at risk of redundancy.

He continues, 'In order to achieve the necessary cost reductions, It is possible that there will be up to 160 redundancies in total across SCEE offices in the UK, WWS in Europe and in the Territories. I also appreciate that what I have just announced will have come as a major and unwelcome shock, and it is something we have fought hard to avoid. However, the business targets that we face have regrettably made it unavoidable.'

We knew it was costing Sony an arm and a leg to get the PS3 on the shelves, but we didn't think it'd go this far. In all seriousness, SCEE was the only part of Sony worldwide not to restructure with the ret of the company, and while long overdue, we hope job losses are kept to a minimum.

Came straight to this page? Visit www.pspsps.tv for all the latest news.