After careful consideration, I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27. This will include approximately 1,600 role eliminations today, and in addition, four studios will leave XBOX to new management.
Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to management and transition to independent studios with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have entered terms to join new ownership with funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3. In France, Arkane’s management is beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options.
It is remarkable that Microsoft owned Undead Labs for 9 years with 0 game releases and sold them off the year before their game comes out
That’s probably partly why they’re being sold off, unfortunately.
I admittedly have not played any of the State of Decay games, but is anyone expecting the third one to be a smash hit? That’s a long time to spend money on a studio to produce a game that might only sell modest numbers.
This might be the first time in a long while studios didn’t just straight up closed by M$ but instead gone indie or sold off.
This is all MSFT spin.
The studios mentioned don’t all have enough funding to continue to be operational at their current burn rates. Those studios will be doing their own layoffs or may not survive at all.
Those studios account for under 30% of the 1600 jobs that MSFT is removing from their payroll today. As the day goes on there will be news that breaks of other studios under their banner that have layoffs which contribute to the total mentioned. It’s likely that their individual stories will be lost under this initial announcement.
She also mentioned that the big studio they currently owned will have their own cut too.
What the fuck does 14 layers of management accomplish even
Each layer siphon some of the money that’s supposed to pass down to the dev.
Those middle managers won’t middle manage themselves.
Nepotism?
I cannot think of a less successful publisher than Microsoft. A wealth of titles and talent and they squandered entirely, cancelled everything that probably didn’t meet imaginary revenue targets and sent thousands of people to the street. They literally can’t release a fucking game to save their shitty subscription service. And now more get sent out to save money for their bullshit AI nonsense.
They should make mojang indie again.
And make id tech independent.I suppose letting these studios return to being independent is technically an improvement over Microsoft just shutting them down.
“The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global […]”
I’m positive this is just austerity measures after folding in activision. They’re probably finding more and more ways to offshore american and western european jobs to poorer nations where they can pay the employees less $$$.
Money is the only motivation. It’s not about producing better art, just more profits.
Probably needed considering how mediocre they’ve done this generation, but ouch. Also, I guess this means game pass didn’t pan out as a bet
They were merrily bleeding me every month until they bumped the price to £22/mo for my kids to basically play Minecraft and Lego star wars. Byeeee.
Boycott Xbox
It’s pretty easy to do when they don’t want to own studios that make games anymore.
Not much left to boycott. Just don’t subscribe to Gamepass and that cuts off their only actual revenue stream left lmao.
https://nogamesforgenocide.com/
Please boycott XBOX for genocide at least. Everyone who bought Forza Horizon supported this
I sure hope all your consumption is completely
legalethical then.What an idiotic comment. Nobody is asking for you to boycott everything you don’t like, but we all have to draw our lines at some point, and looks like OP has done just that. You don’t have to like their line, but you also should not discourage others when they are trying to do something that’s more right than not.
I’m not discouraging but there is a difference between “I boycott Forza because …” and “You support a genocide because you bought Forza” and I’m sure you’re aware of that. As you said, we all draw our lines somewhere, working together, and shouldn’t point fingers at other lines when we don’t know the circumstances.
Video games are not a necessity, it’s a luxury that you feel entitled to because of your privilege
Yes, just like many other things I‘m sure the OP I replied to is using every day.
in my life, i have never seen a company release a company they own and give the IP back to those people. you should be happy or at least respect it. i cant think of a better outcome.
Not every company got that option. And over 3,000 people still lost their jobs …
