Perfect Dark and Everwild reportedly cancelled as Microsoft lays off up to 9000

[SvennoJ]

xboxgreen said:

curl-6 said:

Does Turn 10 (Forza) have nothing to do with Gamepass? How about Compulsion? (South of Midnight)

Nothing about this situation suggests a healthy business model. Even one of the biggest megacorps in the world can only dump billions of dollars into something for so long, as we're seeing now with all the cuts.

Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, Disney plus, and more have all succeeded based on the subscription model. Some of those shows cost a lot money and time as well.

These layoffs were mainly outside of Xbox and was a way for Microsoft to get some capital to invest in AI. Personally, I would've kept the Zeminax MMO alive but Microsoft was smart about cancelling Everwild and Perfect dark because those games weren't going anywhere. I also rather Microsoft not invest in AI and purchase more studios like Ubisoft or Warner bros. Content is the king to success imo.

And many more have failed, including Playstation Vue and XBox/Groove Music.

And yes the layoffs were company wide, however

Microsoft confirmed that it’s laying off as many as 9,100 employees, or about 4 percent of its workforce.

Various sites are reporting that XBox was hit hard, although less than half of the 9,000 fired.

Total Microsoft Employees: Around 228,000.
Xbox Division Size: The Xbox division had around 20,000 employees before the layoffs
Layoffs impacting Xbox: The recent layoffs affected about 9,000 employees, with a significant portion coming from the Xbox division.

So it's a lot more than 4% for the XBox division. In absolute numbers it's more, but XBox is less than 10% of MS.

And not the first time:

Microsoft laid off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees in January 2024, followed by several game studio closures and job losses in May, and 1,000 job losses from its HoloLens and Azure cloud teams in June. Microsoft also laid off 650 more Xbox employees in September, as part of a restructuring related to the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

No don't let MS buy up more publishers just to ransack them.