In a week when Xbox fans were hoping to hear a response from Microsoft to the PS5 Pro, the software giant is making a third round of gaming layoffs instead. 650 employees at Microsoft’s gaming business are being laid off, part of continued cuts at Xbox after Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft cut 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox jobs earlier this year and then shuttered four studios it acquired as part of its $7.5 billion Bethesda acquisition in May. Thankfully, Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks was eventually saved from Microsoft’s shutdown after Krafton, the South Korean publisher behind PUBG: Battlegrounds and The Callisto Protocol, acquired the Japanese studio from Microsoft instead.
It’s pretty sad honestly. Back in the PS3/360 days it felt like a healthy rivalry but ever since the Xbox One Kinect and always online debacle Xbox hasn’t really recovered and I feel both Sony and MS are both worse off for it.
It’s been Microsoft’s standard practice. Instead of focusing on their core item - games and the game experience - they keep following the latest gimmicks and trying to shove random products in where no one wants them.
A few examples:
- Xbox One focused on media. Where media was a great thing to add, watching Netflix, even TV, they made the entire thing about media, and gaming took a backseat.
- Media should have been an obvious “and it doubles as a streaming device!” instead of the primary focus
- In addition they forced the kinect early on. It wasn’t until horrid sales and backlash did they finally release a console without it
- They could have sold it as a great arcade system, or a family add-on for the living room, but again they forced something people didn’t want
- Windows 8 and their freaking tiles.
- “Tablets are pretty big and we missed the boat there, what if everything was a tablet?!”
- Cortana. A fun assistant that was genuinely pretty helpful, that could have bolstered their offerings, instead forced on every single device and plastered on every page.
- Finally, we arrive at copilot. Which, how many times do we have to keep teaching you this lesson old man?
If Cortana had copilots LLM behind it, it might have survived.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Cortana came out too late, well after Google and Apple’s assistants had fully taken over. Their speakers were large and clunky. To compensate they forced it in front of everyone, adding it to everything just like copilot. it’s just their poor approach to marketing, they think shotgunning it everywhere is a smart idea.
I think they’re going to face the same issues with copilot. I think it may have moderate success, but everyone I know goes to ChatGPT, they don’t use copilot. I see a lot of resentment too about it popping up everywhere, and not just from the super techie people here - but average users too. It just feels the same as Cortana. The problem is that it is cool tech, they just don’t understand how to market it well. ChatGPT is simple, it’s cool, it’s right there when you need it. Microsoft makes their products somehow always uncool, not fun to work with, and annoying.
Do you work in the corporate world? Because Microsoft Copilot is included in E3 and E5 licenses so nearly every enterprise Windows corporation is running it. Copilot is being pushed hard at our company and at a recent conference everything was about Copilot. I don’t think it feels anything like Cortana, it feels exactly like ChatGPT. What you state may be true for personal users, but the real money for Microsoft is in the enterprise business.
I do, and I’ve seen about half and half. Half of the companies are rushing to pay Microsoft gobs of money, the other half are like consumers trying as hard as they can to turn it off.
Its been like this for much longer too. I’m still mad they closed FASA game studio.
- Xbox One focused on media. Where media was a great thing to add, watching Netflix, even TV, they made the entire thing about media, and gaming took a backseat.
I really miss the Kinect, but I think they expected way too much from it. It was a lot of fun for games like Just Dance and various sports games for casual play, and I probably would’ve bought a new XBox if they continued to support it.
Always online can go die though, screw that. If I get a console, it’s because it’s more convenient than a PC. Give me a unique playing experience in a living room setting and I’ll pick one up.
With layoffs happening in an election year I am a going to be a bit suspicious that executives are colluding to try to lower employment rates to influence voters to vote Republican so their millionaire executives and billion dollar corps can get lower taxes and less regulation. We’ll see if they start rehiring again for 2025 after the election is over.
Wouldn’t shock me in the slightest
Damn means they’re very desperate that is a good thing
The 650 job cuts will primarily impact “corporate and supporting functions,” according to Spencer, meaning cuts to HR and marketing roles.
I was going to make a joke about HR and DEI getting the axe, but reality surpasses satire once again…
This is par for the course in an acquisition in any industry, lay off all the admin staff at the acquired company because the parent company already has HR and marketing depts ready to step in. I don’t like that it happens, but it do
It do be like that.
Pretty crazy how they botched the success they had with the 360 so badly. Exclusives was what always mattered to me when it came to consoles and they just haven’t impressed in that department since then. Many quality triple a titles have come out every year but Xbox just couldn’t manage to come up with any new IPs that caught people’s eyes and missed on existing ones even with all that money.
I’ve been putting off buying an Xbox for like a year now because these kind of stores keep spooking me
The end of the console gaming era?
No but thanks to Microsoft’s incompetence, there’s no immediate danger of another Microsoft monopoly.
