Xbox | Zenimax Development Studios | Activision | Blizzard | King

[kitler53]

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3lseaakusns2s?ref_src=embed


Major layoffs planned at Xbox.

pure speculation on my part, i've not so much as read a rumor on the topic but..

...what i'm going to pay specific attention to is who gets cut.   while i won't be surprised if a studio like ninja theory gets closed due to hellblade II bombing i think it is the hardware side of the house that is most likely to be gutted.    

we know MS is marketing anything capable of playing a MS published game as an "xbox".   we've heard the rumor that MS's dedicated handheld console was deprioritized to focus on software emulation of xbox games on PC.   We've seen MS promote projects like the "ROG Xbox Ally" an d"ROG Xbox Ally X" or the "Meta Quest Xbox".   We've seen their video talking about xbox supporting multiple store fronts.

this feels like an exit from hardware and that makes the hardware team almost in it's entirety obsolete.  they just need a small 3rd party relationships team to seek out hardware partnerships and market them.

[the-pi-guy]

I don't think that is it, they are still pushing forward on hardware plans. I would expect hardware layoffs if their current plans failed.  

There was another article that suggested they were changing their distributions in Europe: 


[The Verge] Microsoft is restructuring Xbox distribution across central Europe, resulting in some Xbox operations ceasing in some regions

[the-pi-guy]

Feels like Era has turned around on Gamepass.  

https://www.resetera.com/threads/vgc-playstation-maintains-that-it-still-won%E2%80%99t-release-first-party-games-on-ps-plus-on-day-one.1227891/

GamePass is a failed strategy and shouldn't be replicated.

[kitler53]

so this chart looks close enough to talk to.   pretend that the x axis is number of games purchased in a year and the y axis is the percentage of customers that buy that many games a year:



from a customer perspective game pass makes financial sense around 3 games purchased a year.   

so for a vast majority of people gamepass doesn't make a lot of sense because they never bought and dont' want that many games.  they'll just buy their 1-2 games a year that they want.   hence why gamepass is getting the billion+ subscribers they once suggested they could reached never happened. 

but for those few gamers that buy 3+ games a year most of them used to buy a lot more than just 3 games.   gamepass is a huge cost savings if previously you were buying 12 games at release.  as a gamer that a great reason to be really excited about the service.  as a business that's a ton of money lost not milking the whales for money.  

[the-pi-guy]

There's a rumor that the layoffs are huge. I'm skeptical of the source - the claimed number of current employees doesn't line up with a number I'm familiar with. 


I feel kind of skeptical that someone would know more definitively about the layoffs than about the number of employees. Which maybe that's silly of me. 




I'm not sure what the Xbox unit is considered here. 

The Xbox Studios group is more like a few thousand, and if you are looking at the whole Xbox + Activision + Zenimax, I think it's like 20k. 

[Legend]

Yeah it's really stupid. The hardcore gamers save a bunch of money while the casual spend more.

The hard core guys are the ones that are happy spending $500 a year so why the fudge would you build a model that stops that.

If gamepass was 6 month old games, then that could be great. Hardcore still spends tons of money and cheaper gamers would still be happy subscribing and getting a bulk deal.