The company, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sony Corp. also cut back last March, when it laid off nearly 250 people and eliminated nearly 100 open positions. Company staff was informed of the latest cuts in a memo Monday and through videos by the studio co-chairs on an employee Web site. “Our industry is affected by two things: It’s affected by the economy, of course, and it’s affected by technology,” co-chair Amy Pascal says in the video. “Over the last two years, it’s changed people’s DVD buying habits, which has had a huge effect on our company and the industry at large.”

The home video market has been declining as people have not been buying videos as often, and instead turn to rentals, which are far less profitable for the industry.

It seems incredibly strange that the Chinese government should be able to pull one of our most successful products just because it is successful, without any repercussions at all from our government.  Should the U.S. now stop the sale of some manufactured goods from China, as soon as they become successful?

Chief Executive Michael Lynton and studio co-chair Amy Pascal announced job cuts of 3.5 percent of the studio’s staff worldwide in a staff memo sent out Tuesday afternoon. “Our studio remains profitable, but over the past five months, the deepening global financial crisis has begun to impact some of our lines of business, such as television syndication, DVDs and advertising sales,” they said in the memo. These economic effects have, regretfully, made it necessary to take the step we had hoped to avoid, and worked hard to minimize: reducing our headcount.”