More Xbox Layoffs Reportedly Inbound as Company Attempts to Cut Costs

Man Microsoft is the worse company out of the big three.

Sony: "We're the taking the crown for biggest gaming morons for May". MS: "Hold my beer you seen nothing".

the whole industry is in trouble

AAA gaming isnt financially viable spending 300 million to make a game on the hopes of making your money back

@DennisReynolds that helldiver 2 PC debacle was a nothing burger really.

@DennisReynolds lol exactly what I was thinking about. Seems like that PSN account requirement is long forgotten now. What a terrible timing for MS

But look on the bright side, me imploding just added at least $100 to PS5 pros price!

@DennisReynolds That made my evening. Thank you. XD

On topic, again, hopefully this will cause people to shut up about begging for acquisitions. And hopefully the industry can find a way out of this death spiral!

This was always the inevitable result of Microsoft's shopping spree in scooping up publishers and developers in order to boost their short-term profits to appease their greedy shareholders.

Yes, shareholders are entitled to a return on their investment, but at the same time they also need to be realistic and take a long-term view on sustainable growth.

IMO, there's nothing sustainable about Microsoft's recent acquisitions. It was a smoke-screen to hide their under-performing gaming division and now the chickens are coming home to roost, so to speak.

Microsoft should have rather gone the more painful (and less expensive) route of developing and improving their in-house development teams with light acquisitions added to the mix.

It really sucks that hardworking, dedicated and passionate game developers have to suffer due to the greed and short-sightedness of out of touch executives.

This ***** is why it just best to wash your hands of Xbox and to say to hell with them. Both Xbox and Microsoft need to burn to ashes.

I mean this with the least amount of hyperbole possible, I feel like we’re about to enter the lowest point for Xbox if we’re not already there. This is 2013 Xbox levels of bad. Developers don’t like them after their mass layoffs and butchering of talent, general consumers just don’t really care for them, Xbox fans are mad at them for getting rid of the promise of exclusives as well as shutting down studios that they spent billions on, gaming media don’t like them because of how corporate and contradicting their language is, the government doesn’t like them because of their insane consolidation effort. All the while Xbox sales are incredibly poor and the Gamepass model is at its tipping point. The Xbox we all wanted and hoped for is long dead.

Just wait until AI takes over and we see layoffs that makes these look like a small vacation. The industry is about to see a huge change and this is just the start sadly.

@get2sammyb in fairness as a Xbox and PS owner being on both sites daily and loving it i might add. Wonderful sites. The only thing i read on here was MS was going to be a monopoly and they were buying their way to the top and Sony can’t compete without COD. Not stirring the pot but also here to keep it real and honest.

@get2sammyb Phil Spencer likes to gaslight every week about some bs and morons fall for it all the time. The Xbox owners need to stop falling for it.

@DennisReynolds Sir, that comment is pure comedy gold!!!😂😂😂

Microsoft shouldn’t be allow to buy anymore game studios for a few years.

@Deoxyr1bose sadly I agree with all of that.

I've had a solid policy since late last Gen of Xbox for third party due to their excellent bc and features. Right now I'm strongly debating whether to actually get the PS5 pro and shift all my third party buying to ps, or bite down hard and go back to PC where I hate the price tag and the obnoxious thinkering but don't have to deal with Microsoft schizophrenia and actually get support for VR and tell both Green and Blue what to do with themselves. I just wish that route were more financially justifiable because it truly is pricy too to to meet or exceed PS5/xsx performance which is already not really good enough.

An Xbox less PlayStation is going to be an ugly beast as well if it comes to that though....

This is truly truly dire. Buying up whole companies is bad enough, to then turn round and say ‘whoops we can’t afford it after all’? Just feel for the devs, what a genuine disgrace. Think about all those studios ruined by this, talented studios too.

I never thought they'd recover from the XBONE, even though I hoped they would. The console wars aren't interesting anymore and neither are the consoles. I play my PS5 a good bit these days, but it's mostly PS4 games. I'm glad we have Nintendo, but even then I don't think they will be doing anything too interesting any time soon.
I'm old, I LIKE console wars. I like exclusives. We need another big player, cause MS ain't it.

@nessisonett TG was reliably weird. I hate it when reliably weird studios close.

@NEStalgia Xbox hurting the console gaming industry right now trying to Monopolize and destroy it. so I personally think we will be better off without them in the console space.

Yeah, spending a lot of money to purchase something beyond their management capacity and then saying oh! it's too big, let's make it smaller to be more efficient. F u MS

@Jay767 What are they monopolizing? They're chopping off their own limbs while feeding the lions.

The problem is, as they delete themselves, they leave an unchecked PlayStation to do literally whatever they please and as long as they're just cheaper than PC everyone just has to take it. Everyone loses. And ps has already been feeling it's oats too much.

I get not liking Xbox, at this point Xbox fans and ps fans have that in common 😂. But not having a competitor isn't going to make PlayStation better that's for sure.

I would say there going to be teaching this incompetence in business schools for years to come but I’m beginning to think that the only thing they teach in business school is where to hide your cocaine in the office.

I guess it's a good time to do it, Xbox's reputation is in the toilet right now so you may as well release all your bad news at once.

@get2sammyb to be fair Sammy, I don’t think any of us were expecting it to be THIS bad.

Most of us just thought it was bad for gaming that Microsoft owned too much, that games would be locked to Xbox and Xbox would mismanage it.

I don’t think any of us thought they’d buy everything only to then destroy the studios and kill off game franchises so none of us could play the games.

Slightly off topic but related, I would personally support 15-20hr AAA from Sony, or repeatable titles in the vein of soulslike/roguelike, same run time and production values (£50 price tag). Aswell as more titles aimed at the high quality AA mark, akin to Returnal. Then give us one deep, monolithic AAA RPG every 5-6 years (£70 price tag). My point is we should accept as a community a more diverse offering, as our current glutton for blockbusters is an unsustainable illusion.

Dang, I accidentally clicked on Pure Xbox again...
Hang on, this IS Push Square? You'll have to forgive me, its hard to tell at the minute.

These are obviously troubling times with emotions running high with various Xbox owned studios on the chopping block as the Wolfenstein? artwork illustrates, but likening Microsoft to Nazis is disgusting.

If you focus on this quote - "Matt Booty said that the company's studios were spread too thin, like "peanut butter on bread", and that leaders across the division felt understaffed." you'll see the masterstroke in all of this, because your teams can't be spread too thin and understaffed if the teams no longer exist!

Matt Booty r smrt man.

@Mortal

He's apparently also stating that "Xbox needs smaller titles that give the company prestige and awards"...

Wow. After closing a studio that just did exactly that.

Yeah not strange given that Ms is a company that needs and value profits lol. Dont understand why so many pepole some are so upset or see the logic.

@nessisonett Yeah it is a bit sad in that sense yes.

@Mortal

With a surname like that (Booty), he should never be taken seriously...ever. (Exception being him working as part of the Sea of Thieves development team or Skull and Bones)

Why do we never see honesty. This is simply the cost column on the spreadsheet being larger than the revenue column.
Which surprises no-one, but lots of successful publishers and dev, successful as they sell games full price to 10's million gamers across all platforms.
Proceed to give games to Xbox players for free (those that want go already have it,) and restrict any sales from 100's million customers on PS.
These suit could see the revenue issue looming!!!

@Ichiban welcome to click$quare 😆

@trev666

Agreed.

When GTA 6 is reported to cost $2 Billion and AAA games need 10+million sales to just break even, industry is in trouble.

Well I remember how happy everyone was to get Bobby Kotick out of the Activision/gaming industry, but now it appears he got his fat ass out of there at the best possible moment and can laugh all the way to the bank... again.

Microsoft needs to buy more publishes💯🔥

Xbox division has been failing since the xbox one.
Just one actually looks at it and just thinks its fine.
Microsoft has been footing the bill since the beginning.

This isnt surprising.
They are useless as the embracer group. Thinking money solves everything and it doesn't.

Creative minds and games create money.

Not just buying up whole companies for the same price as what the profits may suggest. Buying the entire zenimax brand and not just bethesda.

Buying Activision for basically candy crush and call of duty. Both on the decline or at least call of duty.

Yes it would of been a good buy if they didn't throw absolute billions at them

'Like peanut butter on bread'
Well there's a man surely earning his multi million dollar salary, what a joker.

So the dev studios are the bread? And the dev studios resources are the peanut butter...wait no that's not right.

Xbox president Matt Booty said that the company's studios were spread too thin, like "peanut butter on bread", and that leaders across the division felt understaffed.

So the studios are the bread, and the peanut butter is the staff? So the answer is to cut the amount of peanut butter as leaders already felt understaffed? What??!!!

Or by having smaller bread the peanut butter can be spread more thickly, ah I'm beginning to see now, so drop the studios to reduce the bread which means dropping staff that reduces the peanut butter too though....

Here's a good one
"Microsoft reportedly told staff that the company needs smaller games for the added prestige, one day after it closed down the studio that made them a smaller, prestigious game."

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/24152137/xbox-hi-fi-rush-tango-gameworks-matt-booty

That Matt Booty, what a *****!

Less news about a console not relevant to this site and more psvr2 reviews would be nice. You lot will be the first to say there are no games. Despite never reviewing most of them.

Big Phil and the Booty Boy's farewell tour

Suggestion: fire those overpaid execs. I'm sure their absence would be beneficial in more than one way

Imagine a bizzarro world where a multi trillion software monopoly spends $88 BILLION to acquire two of the biggest AAA Third party publishers,multiple IP's & dev studios,(nevermind the P.R. spend,legal fees vs the FTC & EU & UK regulators,then the undoubted "donations" to various Congress people to put the political blowtorch on the very body designed to protect consumers from big company monopolies!),& then cry poor "we're spread too thinly,we can't afford all these studios!!🙄🤣 Oh wait...🤔

Saw an unattributed quote that supposedly was spoken by Shawn Layden but sounds like him. "Buying studios is easy,managing them is a whole other problem"....whilst he probably has little interest aspiring to returning to Playstation towers it would be well worth the price to find a role back there for him.

I bought my first Xbox around two years ago for a change of scene but this company is an absolute shambles, all these idiot bigwigs who don't know how to steer the ship. I think this is the tipping point for me to sell my Series X and move back to PlayStation I wish I hadn't purchased nearly 300 digital games for it...going to be hard leaving that behind

Anyone who’s bothered to track sales/interest has seen the writing on the wall for a few years now. AAA development has been bungled to holy hell by The Big 2.

It’s become way too bloated with extremely bad ideas. By all means, express distaste over Microsoft closing companies that aren’t making good worthwhile games. Let’s also remember Sony greenlighting 6-7 GaaS games that had to shutter development.

Both of those ecosystems need to right the ship big time. They chased subscription models for way too long, that stuff has to be cut out and reduced to something simpler. No more service games, no more Souls-like chasing. Make actual friggin games with their own ideas and design structures. Make smaller games. Make games with budget-friendly graphics, despite their fanbases obsession with hyper-realistic PC specs that aren’t making the games better, only more expensive to make.

And that $10 hike everyone dislikes, isn’t enough to offset costs. Think about that.

While layoffs are happening everywhere, Microsoft should be put on trial for its bad and destructive xbox strategy of buying big studiis for huge amount of money and closing them down afterwards 🙄😔

Those people that were so vocal supporting Microsoft gobbling these studios back then because it provides them with a stable environment to create are surprisingly quiet now.

Microsoft are such snakes. Buy, buy, buy then fire, close, fire.

@get2sammyb
As I see it, they bought these publishers/teams to try and boost Game Pass, but without the (frankly absurd) increase in subscribers they would have needed, they now need to cut costs to keep shareholders happy.

And/or they need to raise money to pay for the shortfall by trying to sell games to PS5 users - works in the short term but doesnt boost subscribers (but maybe boosts opinion of MS studio games if people enjoy the games).

Do they put up the price and risk overpricing it? (coming next imo).

Game Pass is in my opinion the worst thing ever for the industry - it may benefit a few consumers short term, maybe, but what it does to the industry behind the games... The GP "cake" is only so big, and lots of studios want their "slice" of it.
Though if a 3rd party game launches on GP I tend to (mostly not always) blacklist buying the game on my PS5 as the devs/publisher clearly had no faith in it! (Might be an idea for a poll in the future!).

But what is their nuclear option... Game Pass is in a lot of opinions literally the only thing MS is interested in (not hardware, and certainly not their userbase).
Will they be trying to force GP onto PS5 and Switch by only permitting COD on GP (no version for sale outside GP)??

I totally agree that these aquisitions were a really bad thing for everyone, but my gut tells me they were not buying studios... they were buying a nuclear option to prevent Game Pass failing.
(At the time they bought Bethesda I think they thought of them as a low priced Nuclear option).

Think of the talent that's going to leave and go to Sony, Nintendo, Valve etc. I can't imagine any rank and file developer has any faith in good will for them. The quality of all the IPs they now own will be much worse.

@MidnightDragonDX Exactly. I guess those morons flew a little too close to the sun.

@Rich33 "Though if a 3rd party game launches on GP I tend to (mostly not always) blacklist buying the game on my PS5 as the devs/publisher clearly had no faith in it!"

I don't really think that follows, as several games with plenty of interest in them launch on Game Pass. I think the gamble is that people tend to play on preferred platforms, and, by and large, you're not likely to make a ton of money from Microsoft's player base unless you're Activision or From Software or something. Game Pass ensures they make their cut from that ecosystem, even if they don't make much from it in actual sales.

Actually, in some cases, like with Atlus, I think GP money was used to motivate investment in the ecosystem in the first place.

All that being said, like you, if a game launches on Game Pass alongside other console versions, I pretty much never end up buying it at launch, since it feels like a waste of money to buy something that was just added to an affordable subscription service. But I don't really like playing games on GP, either, so the end result is that I don't engage with it anywhere. And once I'm out of that launch hype state, it becomes just another game to buy after I contend with my large backlog, so I don't end up buying it at all unless it goes super low in sales.

Did that with Omori. Did that with Sea of Stars. Did that with Persona 3 Reload. Did that with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. And will probably even do that with Silksong, assuming it's not vaporware.

For me, a GP launch is like a kiss of death to my interest in it.

"Cutting costs" is not really the right description is it? They are "increasing profits for shareholders".

Let's not sugar-coat the real intention here.

@get2sammyb i agree with you 100% , but if a whole studio is cut like this, in theory would it be possible for sony to basically either pick every one up , i guess ms would still hold all the ip licenses though right? or those studios could become independent and start a new studio with spiritual successor to dishonored / evil within?

@Ralizah
If a 3rd party game is coming out on PS5 and I learn it is also on GPass, as you say it tends to completely kill my interest in it. To me it just says the dev/publisher had so little faith in their game, they were prepared to take their small slice of the GP cake, instead of trying to sell it normally. So i look at other games instead.

(I know you have the opposite cases too, where a 3rd party just decides not to do an xbox version as, due to the number of GP users who will not buy games separately, and the xbox market share, it is just not financially worth doing an xbox version covering both s and x.)

I do make exceptions (i wont cut off my nose to spite my face, to use the expression) but it is normally under unusual circumstances where they have regained my interest eg Lies of P, where they released a decent length demo, which i really enjoyed. Even then tho, i considered waiting for a sale.

If I was Sony I would be fishing the laid-off talent from Arkane Austin since yesterday.

To me, It just confirms my suspicion that the MS acquisition spree was just about taking strong 3rd party IPs and studios away from the Playstation ecosystem.

PS. MS, if you shut down Obsidian we riot.

Make smaller teams, what an amazing ideas. Better execution came out of PS3/360 for a reason. Not 100+ more people to 300 staff and yet too big of budgets.

That and good direction especially.

Removing staff to suit financial reports/keeping up with trends or standing out from time to time and unable to see what audiences want or enough of them in the no gamer space to casually buy, its tough out there.

@trev666
Agreed. They really need to get their ambitions and costs under control. If they could make great games during the PS1 and PS2 era with barely a couple of million then they can do so today too. They just need to cut down their emphasis on cutting-edge graphics and multimillion marketing campaigns and focus more on passion and creativity.

@get2sammyb I really don't get why studios agree to these acquisitions. Financial security is the most common reason for independent developers sell their companies, but historically it hasn't shown to be the case. The big studio just gobbles up the IP and that's the end of it. Do the studios feel like they can't continue to operate successfully without being absorbed?

I'm pretty sure I've seen this show before - is it a rerun?

Didn't Microsoft go on a buying spree of studios in the late 90s or 2000s? And didn't they end up closing most of those studios a few years later? It all feels so...predictable.

@get2sammyb The worst thing is many of us predicted this from the outset and were shouted down. I've been saying for years this would all end in tears, and it's going exactly how I expected it to.

Yep, and just like politics, people are crying "Nobody could have seen this coming!" in the face of the people who warned them this is exactly what was coming. You can't even tell them "I told you so," they're too drunk on the KoolAid to hear you.

@OneWingedAngel If they could make great games during the PS1 and PS2 era with barely a couple of million then they can do so today too.

Something to remember - the PS1 released in 1995. Inflation has almost exactly doubled the value of that today - so $2 million in 1995 is just over $4 million today, at least in US dollars.

(source: https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1995?amount=20)

@RobN
Well, you are definitely correct but ofcourse I didn't mean a couple of million literally. It was a figure of speech. I meant that if they were able to create good games with a limited budget in the past then they can do so today too. They don't need to spend $300 million per game. They can limit their budget to under $100 million or even $50 million and still make great games.

I'm convinced that Ninja Theory's and MachineGames's days are numbered. Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones won't sell enough to keep them around. Obsidian might survive being assigned to work on Fallout/TES. But Xbox is officially dead. You can blame old man Spencer for getting MS to actually pay attention to them.