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Microsoft to Lay Off 650 More Employees at Xbox

Tom Henderson
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Tom Henderson

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Xbox's Phil Spencer has announced in an internal email to staff that Microsoft will lay off approximately 650 people from its gaming team.

Read the full article here...

microsoft-layoffs-1155x770.jpg
 
Its tough, these companies seem to be making so much money left right and center and jobs just go like that. Hopefully those that lose their jobs are ones that voluntarily get to go.
 
Really need to start shaming these companies in a way that matters - financially. I wish a feasible amount of people would protest with their wallets over things like this.
 
The ugly side of the greedy push to secure CoD for Game Pass.

Xbox were able to fly relatively unbothered by Microsoft as a whole, but their spending habits over the last few years of buying up so many properties has basically ensured that Microsoft are now fully paying attention.

I suspected that there'd be a human cost, because how does Xbox justify spending $75.4 billion dollars and then needing to pay the staff that work at these companies on top of this.

Nothing but IP mining.
 
SleepyAgent said:
The ugly side of the greedy push to secure CoD for Game Pass.

Xbox were able to fly relatively unbothered by Microsoft as a whole, but their spending habits over the last few years of buying up so many properties has basically ensured that Microsoft are now fully paying attention.

I suspected that there'd be a human cost, because how does Xbox justify spending $75.4 billion dollars and then needing to pay the staff that work at these companies on top of this.

Nothing but IP mining.
Click to expand...
A bit more than that. Xbox would ahve been axed sooner or later but phil spencer untarruraly tried to make it valuable buy buying a bunch of studios making gaming a more important part of microsoft.

arstechnica.com

Spencer: Microsoft almost abandoned Xbox brand after the Xbox One launch

Splintered management, poor sales led to a question: “Do we go forward with Xbox?”…
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
https://imgur.com/a/cVCEYEc
The service was growing but slowly. The buyouts made the xbox divisoon look more valuable on paper though.
www.statista.com

Infographic: Microsoft's Growing Gaming Ambitions

This chart shows Microsoft's gaming revenue since 2010.
www.statista.com www.statista.com



The revenue they make from xbox now is high, it is their 3rd highest division at this point hogher than windows 11. Windows. Man windows.

www.theverge.com

Microsoft’s gaming revenues overtake Windows thanks to Activision Blizzard

Microsoft’s devices revenue is down once again.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

Xbox as a serivce was not "Xbox were able to fly relatively unbothered by Microsoft as a whole", it was always at the risk of getting canned after the xbox one, phil spencer just convinced sataya to not shut it all down, which I think sataya liked in the end. I'm guessing they thought the best way to run xbox was to turn it onto a service like their other products not hardware.
 
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What I don't get is whenever MS acquires a studio i.e. Rare, Bethesda, Activision, etc. why do they fire people?

Shouldn't it be the opposite? That they gotta need more humann resources so they can make new games with their now-extensive list of acquired IPs?

Either way this is not positive news at all especially to those who are directly affected by the layoffs.
 
GiGAHEART said:
What I don't get is whenever MS acquires a studio i.e. Rare, Bethesda, Activision, etc. why do they fire people?

Shouldn't it be the opposite? That they gotta need more humann resources so they can make new games with their now-extensive list of acquired IPs?

Either way this is not positive news at all especially to those who are directly affected by the layoffs.
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The sad truth is that they buy these large companies, when they themselves are already a large company. They spend eye watering sums of money to acquire studios and their IP (it is never about the people, it is about the property) so they can say "Oh we have Call of Duty on gamepass Day 1". So you have on one side a massive corporation taking over a large company with all its assets and IP, but also all the staff that come along with that. Because they've just spent a lot of money on the sale, they look to try and cut where they can in order to plump up their money for their forecasted profits / losses. In the case of something like this, Xbox was never going to bring in enough money to make a profit when they've spent so much on Acti Blizzard and their division is on its arse right now, so they're resorting to layoffs.

They aren't the only ones, but given that they blew $70+ billion dollars so they can add Call of Duty to Gamepass, so they can try and pump those numbers up, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
 
I stand by the opinion that if these executives would just take a massive pay cut (which would still allow them to live comfortably) then many of these layoffs could be avoided. No single person at a company is worth 7 or 8 figures. Period.
 
GiGAHEART said:
What I don't get is whenever MS acquires a studio i.e. Rare, Bethesda, Activision, etc. why do they fire people?

Shouldn't it be the opposite? That they gotta need more humann resources so they can make new games with their now-extensive list of acquired IPs?

Either way this is not positive news at all especially to those who are directly affected by the layoffs.
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Happens with all companies once they get absorbed. Ususally redundancies and cost cutting. Bungie has gone through a similar thing with sony.
SleepyAgent said:
The sad truth is that they buy these large companies, when they themselves are already a large company. They spend eye watering sums of money to acquire studios and their IP (it is never about the people, it is about the property) so they can say "Oh we have Call of Duty on gamepass Day 1". So you have on one side a massive corporation taking over a large company with all its assets and IP, but also all the staff that come along with that. Because they've just spent a lot of money on the sale, they look to try and cut where they can in order to plump up their money for their forecasted profits / losses. In the case of something like this, Xbox was never going to bring in enough money to make a profit when they've spent so much on Acti Blizzard and their division is on its arse right now, so they're resorting to layoffs.

They aren't the only ones, but given that they blew $70+ billion dollars so they can add Call of Duty to Gamepass, so they can try and pump those numbers up, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
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It isn't just for gamepass. Microsoft wanted to be a larger player in the videogame industry, it all started with buying minecraft. IP is valuable and they are trying to convert a bunch of these games into tv shows.
 
Cosmonaut117 said:
I stand by the opinion that if these executives would just take a massive pay cut (which would still allow them to live comfortably) then many of these layoffs could be avoided. No single person at a company is worth 7 or 8 figures. Period.
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Eh no. Even nintendo did layoffs, they utilise outsourced labour a lot and cut those guys out when they were in trouble with the wii u.
 
bruhlmao said:
Eh no. Even nintendo did layoffs, they utilise outsourced labour a lot and cut those guys out when they were in trouble with the wii u.
Click to expand...
There's a big difference between outsourced contract workers and full on employee staff. The article reads like it's the latter, not outsourced labor.
 
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