Award-winning tech journalist Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that **”there’s more to come”**.
In an episode with his peer and tech journalist Brad Sams, Paul said the situation is **not helping the morale** of the people at Microsoft’s Xbox Games Division. The company’s fiscal year ends June 30 and Brad mentions how “somewhere around the new fiscal year, there’s always a shuffle in the deck.”
“This is a lot of shuffling, though”, comments Paul. Brad further comments that “the slightly concerning part is that there will be continued shuffling in roughly the July timeframe”, just after the end of the fiscal year.
“Like I said, you spend that much money, you now have a top heavy staff in this part of the company,” Paul said. “Obviously there’s going to be consolidation, **that is going to result in job losses.**”
As we all know, Microsoft is a business after all. “Anybody who thought Microsoft was buying up studious to protect some sort of game industry,” says Brad, “you’re learning very quickly that that’s not who they are.”
Over 1900 people lost their jobs in January and Microsoft has shut down game development companies, including Tango Gameworks, the studio behind the heavily-acclaimed title Hi-Fi Rush.
videogame industry has always been volatile, but seems to be worse lately
Long-Ad8374
How about laid off the executive and CEO first, from top to bottom?
xxBurn007xx
Xbox is the new Sega, will become full third party publisher/dev. with blizz IP and a few others, majority will probably get axed. Just my speculation 😅
MissingPP
If they r getting rid of all the dumb woke assholes who r ruining gaming i am all for it. You should get the job based on skill not to check off a box. Also too many cooks in the kitchen is why Starfield was all over the place.
udderlymoovelous
I know these decisions are *probably* above him, but it’s time for Phil Spencer to go. He was a good replacement for Don Mattrick and successfully brought Xbox back from the disaster that was the Xbox One launch, but they need someone new in charge.
Godess_Ilias
they should fire ceos not the small hard workers
Jond7699
People couldn’t wait for them to buy activision. Well now we’re living with the consequences of a 70 billion dollar purchase after a 8 billion purchase all while not generating
profit for the greedy capitalist swine. Anyone who thought there wouldn’t be massive layoffs was disingenuous or ill informed
fuzzynavel34
Can we just fire the executives like Phil, Sarah and Matt instead?
Strategery_0820
You have to wonder what the long term strategy is here
hellraiser29
Whoever decided to buy Activision Blizzard after acquiring Bethesda should be laid off while their at it. Why would they acquire them if they couldn’t afford it. That acquisition was the last nail on the coffin; this is the fallout.
CELTICPRED
My purchase of a series x continues to look more and more bleak
It’s not even a great 4k player.
Coast_watcher
Looks like Pete Hines got out at the right time (retired) in retrospect. Or maybe he saw the writing on the wall.
Mdu5t
They got to big too fast and lost control.
GodzillaUK
So if this is all cost cutting to either push more funds to Elder Scrolls or just recoup from the huge purchases they made, this is dumb as heck. It takes YEARS to recoup what they spent, this is putting a hello kitty plaster/bandaid on a gunshot, it only works in games.
But as it goes, execs will fire thousands before they willingly give up a dime.
customcombos
It’s insane that after we finally get a good year or year and a half of games, the devs that brought it to us get punished.
RagnarokCross
Where were these cuts when your xbox owned studios were running their own IPs into the ground? Now that you own studios that actually make good games, it’s time to trim the fat?
What a fucking joke.
No_Obligation_1500
Diablo 4 studio needs an entire restructure.
__TheWaySheGoes
I’m just hoping everyone who is laid off can start a new studio and develop the games they want to
marniconuke
Poor trillionare company. the worse thing is that even if they were in red numbers (which they aren’t btw, they are recording record profits) they have enough money to tank the losses for years. this is literally just evil and incompetence, i wonder if they even plan on making games? at this point is likely they plan to just do games fully with AI 🙄 can’t wait for that
Jedi_Jitsu
A ton of studios and jobs in the tech sector in general are downsizing. This isn’t just an xbox thing like some of the comments here are making it
rawzombie26
If anyone needs to go it’s the fucking halo devs, kill off the whole dev team and start a new
Stolehtreb
How many people out there who have grown up going to school to become a developer and who are going to just forget about all of it and go to some big standard tech firm to avoid all this mess now? It’s such a short sighted move for every company that’s done this. Shareholder profit structures are ruining tech.
FlameRakshasa
I genuinely hope Microsoft as a company fails in every possible way and disappears from existence
easyasdan
100% they will conveniently happen during game presentations this Summer in order to use any announcements as smokescreen for layoffs
FairlyInconsistentRa
I have an Xbox. Only sticking with it out of stubbornness because I’ve got most of the cities Skylines DLC and a tonne of Train Sim World routes tied to that account.
Honestly, there’s not much to keep people tied to Xbox. Where’s the massive exclusives? The system definers? Halo hasn’t been good for a while now and Starfield was very average. Forza is alright to mess around on but it’s not compelling. Simple fact is, after spending billions on studio acquisitions they’ve still not got a game which defines Xbox.
Sony on the other hand is tripping over themselves with exclusives and games which makes people want to buy a PS5.
It’s sad really, the 360 era was sublime. They did really well and then proceeded to shit themselves when it came to the Xbox One.
Virtual-Face
I swear, I’ve seen this posted 20+ times in the last few days.
xcalibersa
Honestly. This is on Xbox fans for loving Phil and his buyouts
ManFromACK
Major Nelson peaced out at exactly the right time.
SimpleDose
Large corporation reorganizes at the start of a new fiscal year, wow really groundbreaking journalism.
31 Comments
In case you don’t want to click:
Award-winning tech journalist Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that **”there’s more to come”**.
In an episode with his peer and tech journalist Brad Sams, Paul said the situation is **not helping the morale** of the people at Microsoft’s Xbox Games Division. The company’s fiscal year ends June 30 and Brad mentions how “somewhere around the new fiscal year, there’s always a shuffle in the deck.”
“This is a lot of shuffling, though”, comments Paul. Brad further comments that “the slightly concerning part is that there will be continued shuffling in roughly the July timeframe”, just after the end of the fiscal year.
“Like I said, you spend that much money, you now have a top heavy staff in this part of the company,” Paul said. “Obviously there’s going to be consolidation, **that is going to result in job losses.**”
As we all know, Microsoft is a business after all. “Anybody who thought Microsoft was buying up studious to protect some sort of game industry,” says Brad, “you’re learning very quickly that that’s not who they are.”
Over 1900 people lost their jobs in January and Microsoft has shut down game development companies, including Tango Gameworks, the studio behind the heavily-acclaimed title Hi-Fi Rush.
You can watch the entire episode [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy0OF2izqQ0&t=253s).
one of my friends is gonna be laid off end of may
he works at activision iirc
videogame industry has always been volatile, but seems to be worse lately
How about laid off the executive and CEO first, from top to bottom?
Xbox is the new Sega, will become full third party publisher/dev. with blizz IP and a few others, majority will probably get axed. Just my speculation 😅
If they r getting rid of all the dumb woke assholes who r ruining gaming i am all for it. You should get the job based on skill not to check off a box. Also too many cooks in the kitchen is why Starfield was all over the place.
I know these decisions are *probably* above him, but it’s time for Phil Spencer to go. He was a good replacement for Don Mattrick and successfully brought Xbox back from the disaster that was the Xbox One launch, but they need someone new in charge.
they should fire ceos not the small hard workers
People couldn’t wait for them to buy activision. Well now we’re living with the consequences of a 70 billion dollar purchase after a 8 billion purchase all while not generating
profit for the greedy capitalist swine. Anyone who thought there wouldn’t be massive layoffs was disingenuous or ill informed
Can we just fire the executives like Phil, Sarah and Matt instead?
You have to wonder what the long term strategy is here
Whoever decided to buy Activision Blizzard after acquiring Bethesda should be laid off while their at it. Why would they acquire them if they couldn’t afford it. That acquisition was the last nail on the coffin; this is the fallout.
My purchase of a series x continues to look more and more bleak
It’s not even a great 4k player.
Looks like Pete Hines got out at the right time (retired) in retrospect. Or maybe he saw the writing on the wall.
They got to big too fast and lost control.
So if this is all cost cutting to either push more funds to Elder Scrolls or just recoup from the huge purchases they made, this is dumb as heck. It takes YEARS to recoup what they spent, this is putting a hello kitty plaster/bandaid on a gunshot, it only works in games.
But as it goes, execs will fire thousands before they willingly give up a dime.
It’s insane that after we finally get a good year or year and a half of games, the devs that brought it to us get punished.
Where were these cuts when your xbox owned studios were running their own IPs into the ground? Now that you own studios that actually make good games, it’s time to trim the fat?
What a fucking joke.
Diablo 4 studio needs an entire restructure.
I’m just hoping everyone who is laid off can start a new studio and develop the games they want to
Poor trillionare company. the worse thing is that even if they were in red numbers (which they aren’t btw, they are recording record profits) they have enough money to tank the losses for years. this is literally just evil and incompetence, i wonder if they even plan on making games? at this point is likely they plan to just do games fully with AI 🙄 can’t wait for that
A ton of studios and jobs in the tech sector in general are downsizing. This isn’t just an xbox thing like some of the comments here are making it
If anyone needs to go it’s the fucking halo devs, kill off the whole dev team and start a new
How many people out there who have grown up going to school to become a developer and who are going to just forget about all of it and go to some big standard tech firm to avoid all this mess now? It’s such a short sighted move for every company that’s done this. Shareholder profit structures are ruining tech.
I genuinely hope Microsoft as a company fails in every possible way and disappears from existence
100% they will conveniently happen during game presentations this Summer in order to use any announcements as smokescreen for layoffs
I have an Xbox. Only sticking with it out of stubbornness because I’ve got most of the cities Skylines DLC and a tonne of Train Sim World routes tied to that account.
Honestly, there’s not much to keep people tied to Xbox. Where’s the massive exclusives? The system definers? Halo hasn’t been good for a while now and Starfield was very average. Forza is alright to mess around on but it’s not compelling. Simple fact is, after spending billions on studio acquisitions they’ve still not got a game which defines Xbox.
Sony on the other hand is tripping over themselves with exclusives and games which makes people want to buy a PS5.
It’s sad really, the 360 era was sublime. They did really well and then proceeded to shit themselves when it came to the Xbox One.
I swear, I’ve seen this posted 20+ times in the last few days.
Honestly. This is on Xbox fans for loving Phil and his buyouts
Major Nelson peaced out at exactly the right time.
Large corporation reorganizes at the start of a new fiscal year, wow really groundbreaking journalism.
They took a good brand and destroyed it