650 employees at Xbox are being laid off.

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.

  • MermaidsGarden@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      27·
      2 months ago

      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?