Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond Retiring. AI Leadership Replacing Him.

[trunkswd]

dharh said:

trunkswd said:

Not all Microsoft acquisitions have been a disaster. They were down to like 5 studios at one point - 343 (Halo), Coalition (Gears of War), Turn 10 (Forza Motorsport), World's Edge (Age of Empires), and Rare (Mainly Sea of Thieves now). Xbox then acquired Mojang in 2014, which has been their biggest success with Minecraft still being one of the most played games and bringing in tons of money with its marketplace.

Xbox then acquired a bunch of smaller to medium studios in 2018 and 2019 - Playground Games, Obsidian, Compulsion, inXile, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs and Double Fine. Playground Games has been their second biggest success after Mojang with Forza Horizon and now the Fable reboot. Also most of these studios have been mainly untouched from these recent layoffs.

Things changed in 2020 when they acquired ZeniMax/Bethesda. Tango, Alpha Dog Studios, Arkane Austin, and Roundhouse Studios would eventually shut down from that acquisition. Though, Tango would be later saved and sold off. 

Once the Activision Blizzard deal closed Xbox laid off 1,900 employees in 2024 (mainly at ABK) then several hundred more in 2025.

Xbox was likely betting on the Xbox Series X|S having sold far better (think Xbox 360 numbers or better), Xbox Game Pass would grow to 100M+ subscribers, and the growth during COVID would continue. With the Xbox Series X|S falling off they were pretty much forced to release as much as possible on PlayStation and Nintendo to improve revenue.

The absolute banger was the acquisition of Mojang, $2.5B, killer deal more than worth. The rest since go from good but mostly ok to holy crap bad. Activision Blizzard comes to mind as the worst deal made, $69B, followed by the Black Ops 7 flop.

Mojang was a steal at that price. Though I remember at the time many people saying Minecraft was not worth that much. Which if the game died off would have been true, but it keeps on trucking along

Last edited by trunkswd - on 22 February 2026