Microsoft fires 4,800 workers and dumps four Xbox game studios to stop bleeding
When you spend billions buying up every game studio in sight, only to realize that maintaining them costs actual money. Microsoft is having a massive panic attack, throwing thousands of people overboard and putting beloved gaming brands up for adoption.
The corporate reshuffling began with Microsoft deciding to slash 4,800 jobs, which accounts for over two percent of its entire global workforce. The gaming department is getting the absolute worst of it, with Xbox shedding 20 percent of its staff, or roughly 1,600 employees, as the division attempts to survive a brutal market downturn. To make matters more chaotic, another 1,600 layoffs are scheduled to follow in the next fiscal year.
Apparently, buying up half the gaming industry didn't automatically translate into infinite money.
Among the casualties of this budget-cutting crusade are four notable game studios. Compulsion Games and Double Fine are being cast out into the cold wilderness of independence, while Undead Labs and Ninja Theory are being packaged up for sale to other publishers. The fate of Arkane Studios remains a giant question mark, while employees at major entities like Activision, Bethesda, Blizzard, King, and Mojang are currently updating their resumes.
To speed up decisions, the remaining crown jewels like Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga are being moved directly under the supervision of top management. This desperate streamlining is an attempt to fight off the terrifying dominance of Roblox and Monopoly Go. Meanwhile, Xbox head Asha Sharma expressed a desire to refocus the remaining teams purely on massive legacy cash-cows like Halo and Fallout.
This massive panic button was pressed after Microsoft stock plummeted by more than 18 percent in just one month. Investors are increasingly terrified that artificial intelligence will cannibalize the company's core software business, especially since its own expensive AI features are generating more yawns than revenue.
Watching a tech giant spend billions to monopolize the gaming industry, only to immediately dismantle its new toys the moment the stock market frowns, is a masterclass in corporate comedy. It turns out that buying the future is much easier than figuring out what to do with it once it arrives.
Source: CNBC
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