Didn't Nintendo execs take a pay cut over firing employees?

Nintendo is definitely the exception, seem to be the only exception in this industry, which is surprising in a way because Nintendo is still a public company at the end of the day, shareholders of public companies are usually screaming for constant growth and constant cost cutting in a never ending chase after more and more.

Oh yeah, we're definitely not getting Spyro, Crash, or Tony Hawk anytime soon. Not only were each of the 4 main CoD studios and every CoD support only studio hit with layoffs (including 30% of Sledgehammer axed), meaning that more devs at the Activision studios capable of independent development like Toys For Bob, Beenox, and High Moon will be needed on CoD to maintain the strict yearly release schedule, but now we find out that Toys For Bob lost 40% of their workforce, while High Moon was also hit layoffs (no word on Beenox yet that I have seen).

Seems like Xbox is going all in on CoD and nothing but CoD in order to release 4 straight CoD's from 2024-2027 with several hundred less total CoD developers than they had before. 

Like, I get it, I know this is an industry wide issue, but I also know Activision-Blizzard layoffs would have come eventually, due to redundancies and whatnot, overlapping positions, it was inevitable and it doesn't make business sense to have overlapping positions but it's still a shitty feeling, I also didn't expect it to happen this quickly or be this large to begin with, I can't help but feel sorry for the employees as well.

It doesn't change much about Xbox for me and all the stuff I'm excited about, nor does it affect me as a consumer (yet) but it's such a depressing trend in the industry of how many layoffs are happening, even with all the awesome games we're getting and these layoffs are going to damage employees long-term as well, damage them mentally that is, shit isn't okay.

But while I can understand redundancy in certain cases, even if it still sucks, I just cannot explain why development teams are being cut aside from "Quickly! We need more profits!" and that's short term thinking which will bite them in the ass long-term but that's just the market for you, companies only seem to ever think about short term profits.

It's not even an Xbox thing, it's just more bad news for the industry, and it's every week at this point, shit is depressing.

And I'm not saying nobody can never not be laid off, as I said, I understand why some happen, still shitty but they have a reason in the case of mergers, but I can't explain the development team layoffs and in the overall industry it's non-stop lately and has been for the past year, Xbox is just another in the line and they'll be new layoffs next week.

Layoffs are common around this time of the year unfortunately.


CFOs are trying to make their numbers look good for the new fiscal year (The current fiscal year ends on March 30th and the new one begins on April 1st) - its not just only happening in the gaming industry.

So, looking into what is happening at Sledgehammer:

Before the layoffs and restructure they had 3 studios, the main one in California, a 2nd one in Melbourne Australia opened in 2019, and a 3rd in Toronto Canada opened in 2021 (by August 2021 they had 450 devs, 290 in California, 150 in Melbourne, and 10 in Toronto, before these layoffs those numbers had increased to 580 devs with Toronto having grown to about 100 devs and California and Melbourne studios also having grown some over those 3 years). Also in 2021 Sledgehammer's COO had announced that Sledgehammer was becoming a multi-project studio, and it was believed that Sledgehammer had a 2nd team working on a new IP. Then yesterday when the CoD roadmap leaked at Insider Gaming, it was stated that Activision was closing the main studio in California and that employees in California would be work from home until at least the end of 2024 when a new, smaller headquarters could be found/built. Now today we find out that 30% of Sledgehammer has been laid off, which would explain why the larger headquarters in California was no longer needed.

The question now is, were the 30% laid off from the CoD team, or were they from the 2nd team, the one established in 2021 and believed to be working on a new IP? Maybe a mix of both, with the larger amount removed from the new IP team alongside a cancellation of said IP? Only time will tell.

I know it's happening in the tech industry at large and I know they plan them before the new fiscal quarters/year (fiscal year ends July for Microsoft, I think March is for Japanese companies?). But this is the most layoffs I've ever seen in the gaming industry in particular and it's already an industry with high burnout rates and turnover of employees, it's already an industry which has reportedly been suffering from a lack of available talent and it just sucks to see as well because I'm so closely invested in it.

I know it's just not an Xbox thing, I knew the merger layoffs were coming eventually, I still don't think development staff makes any sense, I'd still be upset if it was only business folk and whatnot, other overlapping areas, but I would at least be able to understand the reason behind it and it would be less employees overall but I'm now both upset by one decision and baffled by the other, along with seeing even more people be fucked in this industry. It's hard to have fun gaming when it's constant bad news about the industry.

LOL. Usually these improvements for customers the EU is introducing are applied worldwide even though it is only needed in the EU, as it is easier to just produce one product variant for the whole world. But Apple is extra, they say: no, we invest money in our programmers (and as a reminder - this is an ongoing investment as each software update needs to be developed and tested for two product variants) just to be able to still offer less customer service outside of the EU.

Was I accidentally tagged in the Nintendo thread? Lol. Had a blue notification, someone must have popped a quote box up for me and then deleted it.

Yeah for MS it would be the combination of the usual end of fiscal year stuff they do and on top of that the post merger clean up.

It was me.

Would explain why I was notified that someone quoted me in another thread too.

Strange bug lol.