My employer only had a profit of $850,000,000 last quarter instead of the anticipated $860,000,000.<p>edit: that's not a joke, that's real, those are actual numbers rounded to the nearest ten million.<p>This caused the line to remain flat instead of going up, and the line has only doubled in height in the last four years instead of tripling or quadrupling, so the executives decided to lay off half of the overhead staff to prove that they're doing something to turn around this sinking ship.<p>Now we have mechanical engineers troubleshooting PDM login issues instead of system administrators.<p>The PE jackals slowly tearing apart the still-living body of this century-old company are very pleased.<p>It seems to an outside observer who has done some limited in-country contract work for Japanese aerospace firms that Japanese companies face less of this type of pressure.
I have experience (directly and via friends) at international companies with offices in Japan. When they announce layoffs, they immediately lay off their US employees. A month or so later, they lay off their European employees after going through some process. The Japanese employees are safe though because apparently it's very difficult (or impossible) to lay off Japanese employees. However, they will tell the Japanese employees they're having layoffs to trick them into quitting voluntarily.
It’s harder to fire people in Japan and Europe compared to USA.<p>The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in Japan and Europe compares to USA.
I’m not sure if giving up on PS exclusives is going to cause difficulties for Square Enix at all.<p>I mean, I used to have a PS Vita and I enjoyed Japanese games such as the <i>Neptunia</i> series and <i>Akiba’s Trip 2</i> and <i>Persona 4 Golden</i>. Most games like that come out on Steam these days.<p>Back in the day porting was difficult but there is no major technical difference between the current XBOX and PS and a gaming PC. Even the Switch is not all that different except it is much lower spec and requires more optimization.<p>Making exclusives in 2024 is just a choice to go out of business.*