Forum - View topicNEWS: Xbox Announces Layoffs Amid 'Reset' of Video Game Division
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Cam0
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Asha is simply there to wield the axe. More than likely all you'll be getting is less, not better. |
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GoGoGoFalco
Posts: 62 |
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The four studios mentioned in this article all made games one could classify as arthouse niche titles that had zero widespread appeal and honestly only seemed to get made because daddy Microsoft was funding anything and everything and weren't expected to actually turn a profit. If you're going to consolidate and restructure those are always the first people to go. I thought Arkane shut down back when Redfall bombed already but I guess not. Mojang and King stick around in-house because people actually play Minecraft and Candy Crush and they no doubt bring in lots of money.
I don't know if they still have a ton of hires from the pandemic era but a lot of companies shuttered those people out after it ended and had redundant positions and roles. Trimming the fat might do them some good but it remains to be seen if they can actually pull through. |
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Greed1914
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Overall, I do not see this as a good thing. Comparatively speaking, the studios that were released to new owners came out the best. They keep their IP, they can decide staffing between them and new owners, and projects continue for the time being, at least. But, that also came with the talk of the focus games, and Xbox now showing they don't care about anything other than the big stuff that is also expensive to make. I don't think those games were necessarily the problem. The problem was that upper management was so hands off that they let those swell into things with budgets that they could never hope to get back. You don't need an iron grip, but sometimes an open hand isn't better.
The studios that are left are probably the bigger casualties here. There was a comment out of Id about how they are support team size now. I think that is why they were left with that many. The teams left will all get put onto those focus games in varying ways. That tends to not work out great in terms of morale when you go from lead on a thing you want to make to being told you have to help with somebody else's thing. There is plenty of excitement out there about Obsidian doing Fallout. I do think the series needed to be pulled away from BGS if it was ever going to happen in the next decade. But, the time to do that was probably when they first got Zenimax. Things have changed, most of the pieces that made New Vegas happened are different now. And, right before that Obsidia was saying how it wasn't sure how it would manage its projects with the staff left. Turns out the answer was that those things are dead and they now have to do something else. It sure seems like the ones dealing with this were among the last to know. Despite Quake and Doom being "focuses," id is reduced to support size. From what is out there, it sounds like only one person who worked on the id tech engine is left. Expectation: Xbox will drop proprietary engines in favor of licensed ones that outside contractors already know. So, get ready for even more games using Unreal. Considering how Unreal 5 is at a point where devs are pointing the finger at Epic for not fixing their engine, and Epic is pointing the finger at devs for not knowing how to use it, I'm sure Unreal 6 will go smoothly. |
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enurtsol
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About Fallout, Sharma is also focusing on franchises that can be on multimedia - i.e. not just games but TV, movies, etc. There are more Xbox games that are getting the TV or movie considerations now. She sees them as cross-promoting each other
So it's likely she saw it as a big missed opportunity that the Fallout TV series was exploding in popularity, but they didn't have any new games for it. Since they're doing the next Elder Scrolls first, the next Fallout game would be a decade away And because Avowed isn't really helping Xbox much, Obsidian is now on Fallout duty, so they have at least something Fallout coming sooner rather than later. Sharma is listening more to fans, and fans are calling more for anything Fallout than anything Avowed |
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AiddonValentine
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Do us all a favor and throw this investor speak gobbledygook in the trash where it belongs because you could not miss the point any harder or more callously. You have spent the last four years deflecting any criticism of Microsoft's monopolization of the Western games industry, moving goalposts when it was gutting studios and laying off thousands. You have NOTHING worth defending. No amount of this is worth the cynical exploitation of the medium and the ruination of people's livelihoods. MS can go to hell.
Thing is, the Fallout thing is so cynical because Obsidian wasn't all that interested in going back to it, especially now that their studio has apparently lost a quarter of its work force. Difficult to keep up quality when morale is likely in the gutter right now. And that's before if I wonder if the game ever comes out and is just a cynical way of gauging interest before MS decides to sell it to whoever because they decided they now want to walk back their 2020 acquisition of Zenimax. Things are messed up |
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ANN Forum Mod / Admin
Posts: 5 Location: This account can not receive PMs |
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Let's try and cool things down, please. Obviously people have very strong opinions about these things, so please try to express yourselves as civilly and respectfully as you can manage (and definitely refrain from bringing up other incendiary topics to derail the thread). --F
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faboo95
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Actually, I'd argue that companies aren't making enough games. More specifically how the major dev teams/publishers have almost abandoned working on smaller games or new franchises, putting all their eggs in one basket for their AAA games. And that's obviously a BIG problem when said game don't do well. But I agree, the industry as a whole needs a "reset" of some kind. Game development takes far too long and is way too expensive, to the point that the whole thing is not sustainable unless it's a huge success. But instead of addressing any of that, they instead insist on raising prices of games or reduce production costs by making it all digital. And with the next generation of consoles expected to cost $1000+, I have to imagine the whole thing has reached a tipping point. |
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BadNewsBlues
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Is it any better when you talk a development team doing something with their game no one but you thinks is a good idea and it leads to a terrible game like Redfall which in turn leads to the studio that made the game being shut down? You might scoff at the idea of games taking years to develop, occasionally releasing to diminishing returns. But as you may have forgotten when the industry was shunting games out of the door usually at the behest of the people at the head of a company with months sometimes weekslong development cycles that was no better as it often lead to terrible looking and terrible playing games which were clearly not playtested and it was literally one of the very things that caused the video game crash of 1983. And even after that companies continued doing it with the same results hence where we’re presently at. As much as some might think making a video game isn’t as straight forward and simple as it looks even when the games don’t have things like microtransactions or corporate mandates expecting the game the pushed out in time for the holiday season.
Rare’s last two games for Nintendo was Starfox Adventures and a port of Donkey Kong Country for the GBA. Neither game set the world on fire.
Because that was Arkane Austin not the main studio which is based in France.
The video game industry is a for profit industry I wholeheartedly assure you those games were made with the expectation they turn a profit especially considering Microsoft spent 117 million dollars for Ninja Theory alone while money they spent on those other studios is unknown.
If you can’t remember the last time you enjoyed an AAA title the problem isn’t with Microsoft.
Try visiting places like Kotaku hell you probably didn’t even hit the right subreddits
This is profoundly absurd take. Especially when you remember for as much as everyone swears by New Vegas it objectively was a poorly designed and optimized game and if you’ve ever played any of Obsidian’s other games from around this era this is what their reputation consists of. Wanting people to be let go because they made underperforming titles isn’t the move. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Fri Jul 10, 2026 2:50 pm; edited 7 times in total |
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jdnation
Posts: 2520 |
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Microsoft entered the conole race with the original Xbox because they feared that Sony and Ken Kutaragi would use the PlayStation console under the TV as a trojan horse that would compete with Windows Desktop PCs. It pushed/pioneered online gaming as a service with a fee.
The Xbox 360 successor was also used as a spoiler with an HD-DVD add-on to twarth the Blu-Ray Consortium. The Xbone was used to push TV services based on console use data when streaming took off, and Microsoft was more interested in that bigger market than games, as well as the Wii market it wanted to capitalize on with Kinect, and a trojan horse to push always-online draconian digital practices intended to collect and sell user data alongside killing the resell market for physical discs by having them digitally registered to your specific console hardware. Things it was forced to reverse after PlayStation embarrassed them by very publicly sticking to the status quo... at the time... (F current Sony). Xbox has always been intended to prop up Microsoft's other main businesses of OS, software and now cloud and AI. The Xbox Series S/X gen tried to beat Sony on both price and performance but the weaker model hamstrung the stronger. Then Phil Spencer had the audacious idea to imitate Netflix's subscription model, and intended to spend Sony out of business by going on an aquisition spree, which is why all these publishers and studios got bought up. But it didn't work out... Microsoft has a notoriously borked work culture. They buy their successes rather than cultivate them, and often destroy what they acquire through mismanagement and/or lack of creativity and the usual corporate capitalist conservatism that triples down on running only big hit IP until it is in the ground. Compound that with the new sensitivity regime and leftist US political views seeping in and hamstringing their artists and hiring decisions, and you have an ongoing disaster that further facilitates this inevitable end. Let's not even get into the layers of bureaucratic management for all of this. Gamepass was an offer too good to be true. But unlike TV/films, games are far more complicated, take a couple of years to figure out if the product is even viable before committing several more years of production until completion. And the majority of gamers usually just stick to one game at a time, or keep playing the same things on rotation, so it makes no financial sense to pay for Gamepass, no matter how good a deal it is! So on top of plateauing out on subscribers early, and the roadblock of an up-front $400-500 to even access the service for newcomers, unlike TV Streaming apps available on nearly every device people already own... Microsoft's own hardcore took advantage of the deal to spend as little as possible to get all the games, resulting in considerably less revenue for Xbox overall! Even Microsoft's pivot to PlayStation releases was borked by disc releases that had no data... You know? That same physical-preferring audience that they pissed off with the Xbone towards the PS4 and are now up in arms over Sony killing physical releases after Jan 2028? Yeah, they aren't buying those any more than key cards. Even Steam users would rather wait for Steam sales saving them more than a Gamepass sub. The business model doesn't work. Activision's Bobby Kottick rightly said putting COD on Gamepass Day 1 was not wise, Sony echoed the same, as their sub only has older games after they've maxxed out their revenue through regular retail. So on top of cutting off 1st party revenue, they had to spend more on 3rd party titles to keep the sub fed monthly... leading naturally to lower revenue from 3rd parties, and training the subscribers to wait to get those new games "free" through the sub, or satisfying them with enough sub content that they don't even have the need to buy any new games! You know what Netflix doesn't do? Sell their content for users to own. Either be a Day 1 sub service or a store. One cannabalizes the other, unless you are smart and only put your older post-retail catalogue on your sub that is not your main business model, but supplementary. The most ridiculous results we've learned from the Xbox fiasco and Gamepass gamble are that Minecraft and King are the sole profit generators for Xbox keeping it afloat. Anyway, with the AI arms race becoming the REAL THREAT to Microsoft's OS and services and not PlayStation, Microsoft needs every penny it can to fight that race and it's accountants are scrutinizing Xbox's purpose. This is why Asha Sharma, from the AI division, and not herself a gamer with any attachment to games, much less Xbox is there. She is there to gut it and use the innards to further AI and Microsoft's other profitable divisions and services - the raison d'etre of XBOX. Reviving/resetting is for that specific purpose, not beating Sony, Nintendo or Steam. Xbox is a means to an end - a test to see how well a slimmed down division with a skeleton staff and strong IPs can manage alongside Microsoft's AI and services, and then selling those AI and service solutions to 3rd parties to help their development pipelines - this is why ID Tech is not needed - 3rd parties don't use ID's engine - they do use UnReal Engine - and wouldn't it be great if Microsoft's AI and services could help them? And that is the new purpose of XBOX - a functional real world advertisement for Microsoft's tools and services for 3rd party game dev business needs. The real customers are the publishers and development houses - NOT the gamer. If gamers do get something out of it, then everyone's happy. |
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Silver Kirin
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If I'm not mistaken, I belive Rareware had some internal changes in the early 2000s, some difficulties in the development of certain games for the Nintendo 64 and the founders of the company were already planning on leaving Rare right when Microsoft bought it, that's why the games they developed for the original Xbox weren't as popular as the ones developed for Nintendo consoles. I think they had some successes on the 360, but Sea of Thieves became a very successful game for Xbox. Sadly, Rare's [b]Everwild[/b], which felt like it was a huge project, was cancelled. Furthermore, Microsoft left other developers to work on other Rare IPs, like the Killer Instinct reboot, which was pretty well received, but I don't think it was that popular even among some hardcore fighting game players. Then there was the fiasco surrounding the Perfect Dark reboot, Microsoft claimed it was an AAAA title (yes, 4 As). Like, I don't know why MS didn't try to make a Banjo-Kazooie remake in the vein of the Crash and Spyro remakes, considering those sold incredibly well, especially after the duo's appearence in Smash Bros. Ultimate. |
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AiddonValentine
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And now Bethesda union members are rallying in response to this crap.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/they-want-us-to-accept-this-as-a-done-deal-and-quietly-disappear-bethesda-union-members-organise-protest-in-response-to-xbox-layoffs This is why you unionize. To make things as painful as possible |
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Ruprecht
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The founder of id Software, John Carmack, has said he's not surprised and put it quite eloquently. "To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved." Which makes people's personal feelings on any given title or studio moot. You personally loving a game doesn't mean anything unless it actually sells.
id Software themselves have come out and revealed they're now back to their staff size when they made 2016 Doom which comes off that all the people let go were bloat or busybodies. if people want to use 2016 Doom as a benchmark of quality compared to it's sequels. Too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say. Sometimes less is more. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7248 |
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You mean “try” as Ronald Reagan once demonstrated you can unionize and ultimately go on strike it won’t necessarily get you what you want. And then in turn that can be further used to mitigate the power of Unions.
Not when it potentially involves 3 people doing the job of 16, a problem many of these corporations all too comfortable overlooking the human cost of. Also the idea some of these cuts were because of bloat only reinforces the idea that Microsoft should’ve never bought up these companies if now they want to start making cuts because they haven’t made back the 7.5 billion they bought these companies for. Yes sometimes cuts have to be made but also companies don’t always need to buy up smaller companies to try and monopolize an industry. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Fri Jul 10, 2026 6:03 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Zased
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Most if not all of the people who made Banjo-Koozie aren't at Rare anymore. They went off to form Playtonic and made Yooka Laylee which wasn't very well received. A lot of people are nostalgic for old Rare games, myself included, but many also apparently forget Rare kind of fell off towards the end of their tenure with Nintendo. DK64 wasn't that great compared to their previous DKC and Banjo games and is only really known nowadays for the opening rap. Any modern Banjo-Kazooie game made by the current "Rare" wouldn't be the same as the one they played as kids or made by the same people. I understand though. Name brand is a powerful thing whether it's the games themselves or the studios who made them. There's a lot of emotional weight to just simply hearing the name of a studio or series you loved back in the day is coming back but almost every single time it's not going to turn out how people remember because not only are the developers different but gaming in general has changed and some things simply can't be done anymore. I love all the original 2D Metroids but the last time "Nintendo" did one they just outsourced it out to MercuryStream and didn't do it inhouse like they used to. The people who made Super, Fusion, and Zero Mission didn't work on them and it showed. But at the same time do we need a new 2D Metroid from "Nintendo"? We have tons of indies that do that same thing but better. I seriously doubt they could put out a new Metroid half as good as Silksong. So as much as I dislike Metroid is now seen as an FPS, I'm fine with letting go because we have plenty of other Metroid-like games made by people who actually want to make them. |
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NJ_
 Posts: 3416 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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A big example of this is with Sonic Forces, Sega was advertising Colors & Generations, which were highly-praised at the time they came out, as if Forces was being done by the same people but it turned out a number of those guys left Sonic Team after Generations was done to work at Nintendo which was part of why that game as well as Sonic Lost World had their issues. |
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