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More devastating news for the video game industry, as Xbox gear up for even more layoffs. This time, it begun with Jessie Thomas, a former Xbox Culture Lead let go by Microsoft just yesterday. Even more alarming, Thomas found out they were let go while on vacation.
However, more lay-offs might be on their way. Industry analyst Tom Warren has alleged that “more Xbox layoffs are coming,” although no source was provided for this.
With Tango Gameworks having been shut in the past few months, alongside Alpha Dog Studios and others, it’s not looked promising for Microsoft and Xbox’s portfolio. It’s even more alarming that Xbox are firing staff from its own in-house studio, which is not a good sign at all. 1,900 employees were made redundant in early January, and that’s before they even began the Bethesda subsidiary closures.
Xbox fans enjoyed a fairly promising start to the year with an Xbox Showcase that impressed all. It’s got a pretty fantastical slate of upcoming games, and though few have been developed by Xbox Gaming themselves, it certainly looked like it had an exciting year ahead. Now that a wave of layoffs looks likely, it’s going to be interesting how Project Latitude plays out without a majority of its staff.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier previously alluded to more Xbox layoffs in a “a widespread cost-cutting initiative that still isn’t finished,” suggesting that Tom Warren’s report is substantiated.
At some point, with all the layoffs and studio closures clearly pointing a finger at the individuals working hard on creative projects, you have to wonder if the reason they are failing is nothing to do with them at all. With Hellblade 2, for example, which is an innovative game pushing the video games as a real medium of art, you’ve got to question why it was ever pushed onto Game Pass, a platform that is fit for massively established games that will genuinely drive up subscription sales.
Xbox has been wandering in the wrong direction for a while. The Microsoft acquisition of Activision, for example, has done pretty little for them so far, though with the upcoming Black Ops 6 launch directly onto Game Pass, that’s likely to change.
Microsoft and Xbox’s mass purchasing of smaller studios has been successful in a few cases, though the recent closures have really soured that notion. I think it’s time that we no longer point the finger at the hundreds of individuals working hard, but rather at the ones making decisions on their work.
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