Sony confirms closure of San Diego PR department, former employee responds

Sony has shut down its five-person public relations department in San Diego, Calif., a representative for the company confirmed to Polygon.

Sony has shut down its public relations department in San Diego, Calif., a representative for the company confirmed to Polygon.

"As part of a departmental reorganization, SCEA can confirm that all public relation efforts will now be run solely out of Foster City headquarters. This has no impact on [Worldwide Studios], San Diego Studio which will continue to operate its normal course of business. Additional PR positions will be opened in Foster City," the representative explained.

The team, which was composed of five different PR specialists, was largely responsible for promoting and spreading the message of individual, AAA pieces of software for the company — including a few impending holiday releases, which have been passed along to the remaining members of the PR team in Sony's Foster City, Calif. headquarters.

Former PlayStation associate PR generalist (and The Tester Season 1 winner) Will Powers was one of the members of the team who was cut during the layoffs last week. Powers took to Twitter to question the company's decision to disrupting the messaging of its holiday lineup.

"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," Powers tweeted. "In typical fashion they're sending titles out to die, because they have no PR support -- LBPK, Sports Champions 2, Wonderbook."

Powers added that the Foster City PR team was "already under-staffed," and would be under a significant amount of pressure now that the San Diego team's responsibilities would be shared between that PR team and the company's external PR agencies.

"This is all being said, because I genuinely like and care about the PS product, but they're being hamstrung from success internally," Powers added, ending his self-described "rant."

We reached out to Powers, who declined to comment any further. We've also reached out to Sony to find out if the San Diego team was offered positions in the consolidated Foster City department.