Microsoft has announced job cuts at Xbox Division

solidus12 said:
Wonder how Colt, Jez, and Destin will spin this as a positive for Xbox.

Edit: fanboy is really fighting hard

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Holy shit !! I told you they'll spin this as a good thing

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The situation is way more serious than expected, like a lot, and it really shows the state Xbox is in, whether people want to admit it or not.
 
BennyBlanco said:
Gaming industry is so insane. Imagine working on a singular project for the better part of a decade. Showing up to work everyday. Doing overtime. Just plugging away at one single aspect of a huge project. Then one day the company that made 44B in profit last year is like "hey fuck all that shit. Youre fired. But the meaningless work you've done for the last few years has set us up great! Never looked better!"

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I feel like this would trigger a deep existential crisis in me and make me question everything in life.
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If I was working on a single project for almost a decade with nothing to show for it I would have hit the existential crisis phase LONG before they pulled the plug.

There is something very, very wrong with game development right now.
 
mayham2199 said:
They just showed State of decay so I think they are safe. Everwild I don't remember seeing anything after the announcement.


It's up for me.
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They did another Everwild announcement in a blog post earlier this year, with a single picture update.

Clearly, that didn't mean much.

mckmas8808 said:
It's clear RARE was better when they worked with Nintendo, compared to when Microsoft bought them in 2002. MS killed RARE.
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Facts. We'd of still likely gotten Sea of Thieves, but more polished from jump. And, gotten other stuff with various Nintendo IP, plus a Diddy Kong Racing sequel (which was in development for GameCube but then cancelled once MS bought Rare).

Griffon said:
MS does need to fire a lot of people. But sadly I don't think they'll be firing the right ones.
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Most of the time, these companies never do.

LordCBH said:
Undead is also a more likely choice I think. Though I hope it doesn't happen. SoD2 was a janky glorious mess that I really enjoyed. Would love to see them hit with SoD3
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You know what, I think I've been confusing inXile with Undead; I thought inXile were the SOD devs too o.0

My mistake!

Darsxx82 said:
??? Clockwork Revolution was one of the games with the most footage shown. You have a gameplay trailer from a month ago...


I'm not sure, but I think the layoffs won't translate into studio closures, but rather a "slimming down" of studios. Perhaps Compulsion is in danger, being a studio with 60-80 developers and a game already released...

The reason for thinking this way is that P. Spencer didn't announce the closure of any studio in his statement, although he has done so on other occasions.

We'll find out later today...
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Well technically, they don't have to close studios outright. They could gut some so significantly that they studio itself is just a skeleton and remains only in name.

That way they fire who they want but avoid the full optics blowback of closing a studio. I will be surprised if Compulsion & Turn 10 don't see at least 50% layoffs. Really would suck for those let go, but clearly MS want to do some major clean-up.
 
Man, I don't have social medias, or Facebook, and YouTube, but please keep posting these posts from people online, it is utterly hilarious.

I did not think everyone on social media is retarded. It appears I was way off, being on social media apparently makes you a straight retard.

This is exciting to watch, like millions of kids with helmets on the bus, furiously typing away.
 
a multicultural team of v said:
If I was working on a single project for almost a decade with nothing to show for it I would have hit the existential crisis phase LONG before they pulled the plug.

There is something very, very wrong with game development right now.
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Seriously. I was looking forward to both of those games, unlike most here. But there's no denying it's been a shitshow. At least with Hellblade you can imagine they were tied up with some of the Unreal 5 delays, and they had a small team and executed what they had in mind. The Initiative sounds like it was a collapse of the studio, a while ago. And Everwild sounds like one of the most dysfunctional dev cycles of the whole generation.
 
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I'd create a likely hit-list for studios/teams affected, but it'd just feel shitty to do so.

Even if this outcome was basically inevitable. No company can expand their first party the way Xbox has done without massive growth.
 
I haven't seen anything about job cuts at Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games so far. They're smack in the middle of the firing zone with their games selling poorly and the fact that both studios are in between projects right now.
 
kruis said:
I haven't seen anything about job cuts at Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games so far. They're smack in the middle of the firing zone with their games selling poorly and the fact that both studios are in between projects right now.
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Frankly, both would be a huge surprise to me. They're both small, both producing extremely high quality content in Unreal. I think they could easily get another shot. Would be a surprise to me on par with Tango. Obsidian as well. They all operate lean and producing great stuff.
 
Punished Miku said:
Frankly, both would be a huge surprise to me. They're both small, both producing extremely high quality content in Unreal. I think they could easily get another shot. Would be a surprise to me on par with Tango. Obsidian as well. They all operate lean and producing great stuff.
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Who would ever associate Hellblade 2 and South of Midnight with "extremely high quality content."
 
RAIDEN1 said:
Perfect Dark was the next best thing to a new Deus Ex entry....(if you caste aside Cyberpunk)....One thing we DO know for sure is, come the 25th anniversary, brand Xbox will be even further a shadow of its former self...(I know it already is, but it will be even more into the abyss come July 2026.) No longer a big juggernaut name in the console business..
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I think Perfect Dark getting cancelled will be another Scalebound/Phantom Dust moment for MS. As in, yes it wouldn't have been the biggest hit, but it's a game/IP the core gaming segment were interested in and looking forward to. And something different from yet another COD or whatever that could've actually turned out well.

Cancelling that game will be an optics hit to MS that'll be very difficult to recover from. Similarly, any deep cuts at a studio like iD Software, or deep cuts at/closure of studios like Double Fine. Those types of studios have legacy (or people in charge with legacy) going back to the late '80s and early '90s. Strong rapport in the core gaming industry.

MS can't really afford another Tango situation, but with as many cuts they've got planned, something of historical significance is likely to get heavily affected. These cuts are about to get pretty ugly, I feel.

SEGAvangelist said:
Wow. Everwild and now rumors about Perfect Dark, Zenimax Online's new IP, and Kojima's OD as well. Could be 4 games cancelled. I bet Sony cancels FAIRGAME$ tomorrow since they like to hide their bad PR behind Xbox stuff like today.
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Oh man, I hadn't even considered OverDosed. If that game gets canned, then yeah, some very clear "we give up" energy, at least in terms of committing to any game that isn't a super-safe corporate-driven mega-franchise IP.

It's not like MS don't have the IP to play things super-safe as a publisher and be well-off. But I do think people who had the dream they'd use COD/Minecraft/Diablo/TES etc. money to subsidize dev costs (and potential market underperformance) of games like HiFi Rush, Everwild or heavily redundant IP like Forza Motorsport even (considering it now has to compete more directly with better IP like Gran Turismo), are finally about to get their wake-up call.

MS aren't gonna do that; they're culling as much of that away as they feel they can get away with. You don't need those types of games when you aren't primarily a hardware platform holder anymore, same sort of culling happened with SEGA. It was just more gradual there because SEGA didn't buy up a lot of the big money-making IP once they went 3P, so they still had to rely on the Panzer Dragoons and Seamans for a while. Most of that went away during 7th gen tho and only now are they reviving some of the classics which aren't Sonic, Yakuza, or Persona.
 
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Heisenberg007 said:
They are Xbox's most profitable studio.
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And to add to this, the entire reason they wanted the acquisition, supposedly. According to Phil (and others) during the whole ABK campaign with the CMA and FTC, they wanted it primarily as a means to break into the mobile market.
 
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Jigsaah said:
Come on, some actual facts please. I guess this response means we don't know yet. That's fine. I hope the folks land on their feet.
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We can't answer that when we don't know for sure the extent of the restructuration.
Better wait for MS be clear about it or some unhappy people start leaking more info.
 
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