Report Claims Xbox Is Planning More Cuts Following Studio Closures

lol What a nightmare.

I'm so glad most Japanese devs are safe from being swallowed up by these sharks.

With a company Microsoft’s size and the Xbox gaming division this could go on for a few weeks.
Looks like they mean business with these staff reductions.
Not sure how many total employees the Xbox gaming division is across all studios and at head office.
But there is probably many more they could let go before they get to the number left they want to.

My company has about 1200 and I reckon we could let about a good 100 go, mainly office staff and it wouldn’t harm business at all, as long as it was focused on the right departments etc.

So god only knows how many Microsoft could let go with not to much impact.

Looks like no studio is safe this will cause irreversible damage to the Xbox brand.

Honestly I now wish the ActiBlizz deal got blocked with what they are doing.

This is gonna get deleted. But Microsoft can go ***** the ***** off. Years of scraping by and being the underdog resulted in truly great innovation, a customer friendly environment and a real dedication to game Preservation. No one else did that aside from maybe Steam. I'm so upset at the mere mention of cost-cutting when they spent BILLIONS on acquisitions, only to shutter a GOTY developer a year after its launch. This is sickening. They are taking a GIGANTIC ***** on DECADES OF WORK!

$60bn for a match-3 mobile game and an FPS designed by an intern with a set square.

It’s taken a few years to go through Bethesda, so you would assume there is a good chance parts of ABK could be shuttered.

AI will replace a lot more jobs in the tech industry. This will be going on for a long time into the future. I am not even sure why i have my job. I am an accountant that crunches money numbers into a spreadsheet. AI could do it 100X faster than me. Not that i want to be let go. But AI is going to reshape a lot of what we knew yesteryears.

Not good. Be prepared for a massive talent loss at Xbox studios soon. With morale low and rumors of more cuts coming, the best and brightest are going to voluntarily hit the exits — before they risk being thrown out.

@HonestHick haha same…

…😭

@HonestHick
Part of our engineering division showed of AI creating a programme from a design drawing then a machine producing the part.

No person created the programme which happens currently. AI did it instead. Wow.

Can’t go one day without lousy drama at Xbox.

The only consistent news with Xbox is never about games. Only business drama.

@OldGamer999 yeah AI is going to get insane in the next few years and then much like everything in tech in the earlier years it will double every year before it plateaus. The scary thing is whats this things ceiling? It’s already insane and only going to get more and more.

@HonestHick
some jolly news after yesterday and today.
Gears 6 gameplay next month?

Sony just finished bished up their whole debacle with Helldivers 2, and no Microsoft is like "hold my beer" and has to one up them on BS.

At least Helldivers 2 was an easy fix.

developer's morale will plummet even more and progress on games will get even slower at xbox studios. i was looking forward to elder scrolls 6, avowed, and clockwork big time. not gonna hold my breath. microsoft are way more evil than i ever dreamed. im so mad that i won't even consider going to pc cause that involves microsoft.

Option A: Shut down two of the best studios, who have released critically acclaimed games and want to do more of what they're best at.

Option B: Switch Call of Duty to a biennial release schedule

Microsoft:

Feel the Burn indeed, they’re taking a damn flamethrower to everything… Studios, developers trust, public relations, gamer enthusiasm for the brand. What will rise from the ashes of the Xbox we once knew…?

Oh yeah, ‘Microsoft Gaming’.

Disastrous if true. Though it's born of ms silence of not. It's bloomberg who has quite a reputation for making things up, or "hallucinating" as it were. I know I've been playing my switch pro for the past 4 years and really love it, thanks Bloomberg!

But if true...... I'm sorry Xbox can't recover from this series of calamitys and pr nightmares. It's worse than 2013 and it took 12 years to fail to recover from that and they sink it again.

@OldGamer999 @HonestHick I expect AI will led to the second great depression quickly. Rapidly humans are becoming obsolete, useful only for minimum wage labor work where robots are too expensive. Which leads to low employment. Which leads to lack of consumption. Which leads to business collapse. After that comes the third world war and angry impoverished masses look for blame. And for the pockets of survivors after that, communes. The idea of working for your keep is officially outdated. I honestly doubt most of us will see old age, our clocks are already ticking. We're consumables past the use by date already.

Honestly governments needed to outlaw so called progress if it's too destructive to the fabric of civilization.

@Xbox_Dashboard If they delete you here, work with Push to make it a full Taking Point. You can be a guest writer with tons of likes.

@OldGamer999 let’s sure hope so. At this rate they need to have a huge showing at the June event. Might even need a July and August event if they don’t chill out. Haha

@NEStalgia at least you don’t have to worry about BC anymore. We won’t have a job for electricity. 😂

@HonestHick No need to buy $3800 PCs to buy ubisofts $100 remake of a pirate game with a chess simulator when all we have left is different colored pebbles to play real chess on a dirt board.

In other news Ubisoft just sent an ad for Rocksmith+....... Coming to PlayStation and Steam. ..................

Yeah it's over. Even Ubisoft is treating Xbox like Wiiu.

I’m jumping ship. Bought my last Xbox console game. I’ll play the ones I own, but from now on Steam it is. No more GamePass I think either. I had a huge library of PS4 games and also jumped ship over disagreeing with their direction.

Honestly it sounds like Phill lost control of the ship, and someone else is now in command.

Honestly… it’s starting to sound like ABK acquired Microsoft instead of the other way around…

@Utena-mobile no i get it. You aren’t wrong. But they are chasing that big cash cow and all those Ip’s. I think it time they will get it to the way they want it. But these closures stink.

@NEStalgia man that would be bad if Ubisoft didn’t support Xbox. Maybe they will be done in a few years. I don’t know. I hope not. But if so can i get a Xbox controller on PS with the PS symbol's?

This is all unreal. Definitely not proud of being an Xbox fan right now. It's all indefensible atm. We all wanted ABK, but not if this was the end result.

@HonestHick Yeah, I mean, I'm sure assassin's Creed will be on Xbox etc. But it's utterly shocking to get a Ubisoft ad that excludes Xbox. It excludes switch as well, but Rocksmith is kind of demanding and requires I/o or a mic so that makes sense. But "coming to PlayStation and Steam" where steam replaced Xbox as "the other console"..... And this is a game that's already been on PC via Ubisoft for ages. So they're advertising a second store front plus PlayStation.

That's bad.

Lol, yeah I love the Xbox controller so much 😭. If course it works with PC. But just window shopping prices that's still quite the ask.

@NEStalgia Yeah PC is expensive for sure. I don’t know what is going to happen at Xbox. I wish i did. But they did it to themselves. So no need to feel bad for them. Man a PS and Nintendo only console world would be odd times.

@NEStalgia Jason Schreier has always carried water for Sony, long before he got to Bloomberg.

Not what any of us were hoping for, but I’ll still take this over a console market with no Xbox any day of the week. A console market with no serious competition for Sony is about the worst thing I can imagine for the console market. And make no mistake about it, had MS not made some big moves, this could very well have been the final generation for Xbox.

So if it takes layoffs to get the industry in general to a much healthier position and if it takes layoffs to get MS to a more competitive position, then so be it. The entire industry shoulders a lot of blame for thinking the rapid expansion during COVID was gonna last. It never was and companies across the industry should have been much better prepared for that.

The gaming industry is seeing seismic changes and a new equilibrium needs to be found. Hopefully it doesn’t take too much more reshuffling throughout the industry to reach that equilibrium.

This is not what I expected with this merger. Some cuts due to redundancy with executives, accounting, etc., sure, but not cutting all this talent to focus on "tentpole" games.

I was hoping that by having a ton of studios with a wealth of IPs would mean some revitalization of forgotten games spread across those developers.

I thought it would mean that the "COD Factory" developers could perhaps work on passion projects for a change.

I hoped that things would be different under Microsoft as there was a time when developers were given a "longer leash" to work on projects.

Now, I worry about Ninja Theory if Hellblade II doesn't stick its landing.

I worry about Double Fine if their next game isn't well received (though I am sure if Microsoft closed that, Tim Schafer would just open another studio the next day and take his employees with him).

I worry that Perfect Dark will get canned because it's seeming to be too much of a hassle, now.

Is pressure on InXile with Clockwork Revolution?
Will Fable get canned?

It's just sad and I hope this reporting is wrong.

I didn't realise acquiring Activision was such a bad Idea. Ever since Activision joined the team, I've just been hearing bad news and nothing good.

I'm gonna tell you what happened. They bought Bethesda and Activision and thought people would just leave other platforms in droves for Xbox and thats not what happened. People didn't care and stayed where they are. Now this is the results of that failure and the future 3rd party approach

I no longer think the heads at Xbox are making these decisions. Not that they themselves are innocent, but I really think it’s those in charge at MS calling these shots. Not even giving some of these studios time to showcase what they can do. It’s really sad. At this point, PlayStation needs to send Xbox a muffin basket as a thank you for distracting from their disaster of a weekend.

I think everyone needs to let Microsoft rot. They are making the hobby far too cynical and seem to swan around thinking they are leading the industry. Absolute horseshit.

@GrailUK

You do you brother. I’m going to keep supporting Xbox as I always have. This is an industry wide problem atm, not just an Xbox problem.

This was as predictable as rain in the Northwest. All the cheering on of a monstrous (in both senses) corporation spending tens of billions to acquire Activision/Blizz in order to fire people and make MS shareholders happy made me sick. And the meaningless “I hope they land on their feet” from the cheerleaders. Grow up. Corporate culture, just another manifestation of human nature, never changes. Naiveté is not an attractive character trait.

@Nancyboy

Over 10,000 jobs lost in 2023 and already over 9500 lost in 2024 and were only into May and yet people are running around acting like this is a consolidation problem or just a MS problem, lol. Yeah, no. This is a COVID problem and even if no acquisitions were made at all the last few years, we would still be seeing massive layoffs industry wide. I honestly can’t think of a better example in regards to people seeing what they want to see.

Naiveté is absolutely not an attractive character trait.

@Jenkinss not just shrier carrying water for Sony. Bloomberg seems out to destroy console gaming entirely. They make up junk about Sony and Nintendo all the time too. Except Sony and Nintendo come out and debunk it. Xbox just keeps silent and let's them say anything. Though it may be true anyway this time.

@HonestHick I'm struggling to identify what's more expensive, a return to PC gaming, or a world of only Nintendo and Sony where games will surely be over $1000 and mandatory monthly fees. If MS really crashes and burns, I'm really hoping someone like valve really steps up with that pc as a console ecosystem.

I know it's too early for hardware reveals with switch 2 pending she ps5 pro pending but I just want MS to announce what their new hardware and strategy is and offer something positive for the future. Because dwelling on pretending the Series is their platform while they've clearly moved on will really kill developer support which in turn will kill their market before that next hardware launches.

@NEStalgia i do agree that MS would be wise to let devs know what they have planned. The thing is Sony can do almost whatever they want now. At least in Europe where it’s like a 4-1 lead and even 8-1 in some areas. At least here in the states it’s fairly close and Sony can’t just ignore Xbox completely. Thats a huge question if MS goes down would someone else come in and not be cloud. Steam would be cool only if they get it right.

Good reviews do not equal sales. Microsoft is a massive company, if you don't make them money then goodbye. Sony does the same. Days Gone 2?

Well, that doesn't sound good.

@RIghteousNixon the concern isn't if it's this versus no serious competition for Sony. The concern is that this guarantees so serious competition for Sony. Hardware? Sure. Serious competition? Outlook hazy. Nadellas moves are speaking loudly that using their content to push their platform isn't their priority, seelling as much content as possible is. Will they still sell hardware? Yes. Will they focus on it and use content to challenge Sony? Right now the Outlook is no. They want to compete with steam now. Did that apply 6 months from now? No because they change strategy every 3.

@GamingFan4Lyf 100% agree all around.

@OldGamer999 wait you have machines designing and building machines? I think I watched a a movie about this it didint end well for the og creators and then had a lot of sequels.

@VisitingComet1
We design but AI creates the programme to make the parts on the computer controlled machine’s.
In a synchronisation way, as well now.

Some parts go into your USA F35 fighter jet.
So best not watch those movies anymore.

Wouldn't mind Todd Howard being offered one of those severance deals, to be honest.

@themightyant yep MS we’re certainly singing a different tune while the acquisitions were going through. Just like politicians promise the world while being elected.

Turns out MS have done yet another 180 and gone back on their word. Not a good look, I won’t trust them at all from now on.

Not strange given that Ms a is company that needs profits lol.

@Kooky_Geezer So do I! I mean with the news suggesting they don’t have a concise plan of what to do with COD, put it in Game Pass, don’t put it in there, raise Game Pass sub prices for COD… it clearly indicates Microsoft did NOT have a plan set and agreed on before they bought ActiBliz, they should NEVER have been allowed to buy it based on that alone, the biggest game in the world and they had no plans set about what to do with it? I said in another thread if they put it on Game Pass and increase its sub price, if that results in sub numbers plummet and COD sales dropping are they going to cancel COD and fire the Activision staff?

What is obvious is Phil and his team and MS heavily lied through their big asses during the acquisition investigations. And to us gamers.

@EvilSilentFrame If you ask to spend 70 billion dollars of the companies money, inviting extreme in depth scrutiny governments around the globe with main stream media reports globally with the purchase made with that money, it tends to attract the attention of the entire main leading board of the company… and if they don’t like something, like bottom line reducing, they will demand changes.

They gave tens of millions to Activision Execs in the buy out and are going to fire the people that actually make them money.

@GamingFan4Lyf It’s like Sony closing Naughty Dog and firing all the staff if a game doesn’t hit….. it’s obvious the head board are leading the shots, but it does seem that the Xbox team lacked serious planning too? I mean they don’t know what to do with COD! Seriously? Not a good look and not professional business conduct.

They spent billions on getting activision and want us to believe they have to cut costs lol.

First, Sony closes London Studio, Japan Studio and Media Molecule.
Now, MS closes Tango, Roundhouse, Arkane Austin and Alpha Dog.
I'll just keep playing while I can, before everything consolidates into FIFA, COD and Fortnite. My backlog is so big atm that I have more games left than days of life.

AA and Indies are where it’s at at the moment. Honestly they can close as many big studios as they want for all I care because all they do is pump out dogshit. From the ruins of big devs you get smaller studios opening who’ll work on interesting, fun games, away from the constraints of big corp. There is a positive to all this somewhere.

Im never gonna get a xbox series x or s after this, this is going to far, so many great studios that they are shutting down, this is so ***** up.

If anyone's wondering why this is happening now; it's the end of Microsoft's fiscal year in less than 2 months, which means they have to get everything all looking sleek and efficient to keep the investors happy.

Ah, Capitalism. Don't you just love it.

@OldGamer999 lol thats terrifying!

Welp, looks like they ARE going on a closing spree likely... What a bad decision.

@EvilSilentFrame
Yes and a PS5 with a year of free PS plus premium for every Xbox employee.

@Foxx_64740
Media molecule? Nah there still there!

@OldGamer999 Are you management? How did you come up with that number? If you're not management, how do you know what each department does to come up with that number?

@NEStalgia You think really think AI is replacing manual labor jobs anytime soon? Electricians, plumbers, A/C repair, etc are safe.

@RIghteousNixon "So if it takes layoffs to get the industry in general to a much healthier position and if it takes layoffs to get MS to a more competitive position, then so be it."
Are you in the gaming industry? I'm sure people in the industry are also saying "so be it" when it comes to layoffs. Well the execs are, but everyone else probably isn't. These are real people that need to support themselves and their families. Anything for your games though, right?

And healthier how? The current problems affecting the industry certainly don't have to do with a surplus of talent. Most of the big corps push for derivative games that follow trends (open world, live service, lootboxes, etc), not owning your own games, etc; one of the studios that just released an award winning game that was the antithesis of all of that was just closed. Layoffs aren't going to fix management that continue to ruin gaming.

@M20B25 What sort of sales do you want exactly? In Hi Fi Rush's case, the game was shadow dropped and put on Game Pass day one. Regardless, it was still, as Aaron Greenberg stated, "a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release." What more do you want?

@Fenbops You couldn't care less when people lose their jobs? Lol Tango matches your description of one the smaller studios and was also one of the studios that was closed.

@Foxx_64740 I'm still pissed about Sony closing Japan/London Studio (MM is still open btw). Those were the studios that helped make PlayStation iconic. Sony is going all in on these huge blockbuster games that take years to make and cost an exorbitant amount of money, only to lay people off when the game shockingly can't make more than its budget. It's unsustainable, but they continue to push for these games.

They could've used these closed studios for A and AA games. Sony certainly needs to fill the huge gaps in their release schedules.

@Lanmanna @TommyNL Thanks for letting me know about MM.
I was sure about being closed but after your comments I searched the old news and it was 'only' a part of the devs being layed off.

@Lanmanna

I am well aware that people losing jobs isn’t a good thing. I have been there myself. That will never ever change the simple fact that the industry grew too big too fast from the COVID years and that a correction needed to be made, industry wide, in order to keep studios healthy and profitable.

What do you expect, studios just to keep people on they can’t afford, keep projects going they can’t afford, all so they don’t have to lay people off. That would only be worse as in all likelihood, many studios would just go under and then everyone loses their job.

So yes, it may sound callous, but if some people need to lose their jobs to get this industry back to a healthier position, then so be it. People get laid off all the time, in pretty much every industry that exists. They will find new jobs, new studios will pop up where old ones went under. So goes the cycle of gaming.

And I never said anything about a surplus of talent. Now you’re just assuming ***** regarding what I was saying. If you think the overall gaming industry is in a healthy position right now, you have been living under a rock. Lots of games are underperforming sales wise across the industry. Growth in the console market is completely stagnate. Hell, even amazing AAA games like Alan Wake 2 aren’t profitable yet and even Sony, who is leading Xbox by a country mile, isn’t seeing enough profit from their big AAA titles.

I’m not gonna go into it any more than that as there is a wealth of quality articles on the internet regarding why the industry is laying people off. I’ll even recommend one. An article entitled “ Why is the $180bn games industry shedding thousands of staff?” over at The Guardian. Do a Google search, find that article and read it. And there are plenty more out there as well.

It would be fantastic if we lived in a world where people didn’t get laid off and there were rainbows and sunshine everywhere. Unfortunately, that isnt the world we live in and sometimes companies need to lay people off to get back to a healthier state. That’s the real world.

@Lanmanna No that's my point, manual labor jobs are all that will remain for humans. Disposable humans are still cheaper than mechanical robotics for that. Problem is most of those as is are part time no benefits low pay jobs that 3 of them are barely a living. Plus half the labor force will be obsolete all at once. Not utility trades but that's not even 10% of the labor force and in a few years every office worker is going to be a plumber and it'll be worth $8 an hour with a glut of supply.

@Lanmanna no I do not care about them, I’m not gonna come on the internet and say that I do like everyone else.