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Microsoft to Lay Off 650 More Employees at Xbox

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

The news comes from Stephen Totilo from Game File, which Insider Gaming has been able to independently verify.

The full email reads,

Subject: Changes to Microsoft Gaming

“For the past year, our goal has been to minimize disruption while welcoming new teams and enabling them to do their best work. As part of aligning our post-acquisition team structure and managing our business, we have made the decision to eliminate approximately 650 roles across Microsoft Gaming—mostly corporate and supporting functions—to organize our business for long term success.

I know that this is difficult news to hear. We are deeply grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are learning they are impacted. In the US, we’re supporting them with exit packages that include severance, extended healthcare, and outplacement services to help with their transition; outside the US packages will differ according to location.

With these changes, our corporate and supporting teams and resources are aligned for sustainable future growth, and can better support our studio teams and business units with programs and resources that can scale to meet their needs. Separately, as part of running the business, there are some impacts to other teams as they adapt to shifting priorities and manage the lifecycle and performance of games. No games, devices or experiences are being cancelled and no studios are being closed as part of these adjustments today.

Throughout our team’s history, we have had great moments, and we have had challenging ones. Today is one of the challenging days. I know that going through more changes like this is hard, but even in the most trying times, this team has been able to come together and show one another care and kindness as we work to continue delivering for our players. We appreciate your support as we navigate these changes and we thank you for your compassion and respect for each other.

Phil”

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would be laying off 1900 employees at the company. In May 2024, it was also announced that Xbox would shut down four of its game studios, including Tango Gamewords and Arkane Austin.

Let us know what you think of the latest round of layoffs on our community forum.


For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news about the Raven Software union that’s targeting Activision

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Avatar of PenniacGiant
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PenniacGiant

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63 messages 134 likes

Gaming industry is rough these days for jobs. Damn.

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Avatar of Jivesh
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Jivesh

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90 messages 81 likes

Consolidation, yay!

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SoloDolo

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99 messages 161 likes
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Mandella_Effect

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20 messages 23 likes
Avatar of Mike Straw
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Mike Straw

Senior Editor

148 messages 232 likes

From the numbers I have, we're at roughly 12,712 jobs lost across over 135 companies this year alone. It's absurd

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D
Dangerman1337

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66 messages 64 likes

Sucks to all the people being laid off :/. Even if not game development a lot of support services are going to get even worse.

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J
J1mb0w

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62 messages 62 likes

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.

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Hully

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7 messages 11 likes

MS and Sony are in a competition to see who can get the worst press.

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Avatar of Hythlodaeus
Hythlodaeus

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45 messages 45 likes

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.

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SinfulGenius

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20 messages 4 likes

The ftc is probably yelling "we told you so"

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Avatar of SleepyAgent
SleepyAgent

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54 messages 48 likes

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.

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