Over the past 24 hours I've received the "what does this mean for gaming" question on everything that happened yesterday.

It's been very tough to answer.

The players and engagement are there. The revenues are there. This isn't a demand problem. (Sure, there are nuances in the weeds of course).

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 3 July 2025 at 15:39

Yes, the big live service behemoths taking so much wind out of the rest of the market is a huge challenge, as are the pressures particularly impacting younger players that are funneling them into f2p and more easily accessible games. As are *looks at every and any other issue* one could mention.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 3 July 2025 at 15:40

But it's not a demand problem.

What is so crushing, and what make one throw one's hands in the air is that the cuts were (reportedly) primarily done to help fund building AI infrastructure.

There's no reasoning out some big takeaway on what this means for gaming here. This is something else.

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— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 3 July 2025 at 15:43

Satya's obsession with AI is what will bring everything down

As I said, the cuts are just to funnel money into AI.

Money being "saved" on these cuts isn't going to Microsoft Gaming, Satya is diverting it to AI.

Tens of billions pumped into OpenAI which still doesn't profit.

Don't worry, AGI is just around the corner, as OpenAI and Microsoft have been saying for the past 5 years, lets pump tens of billions more into AI and OpenAI which loses $5bn per year, AGI is almost here! Meanwhile ChatGPT is still regularly dumb as fuck and obviously an AI, Microsoft is set to become one of the most hated companies and destroy their any goodwill brand they have, and replace all creatives with AI which will pump out soulless slop, We'll also make people use CoPilot because we're cramming it down their throats and installing it absolutely everywhere.

I agree on that. I am just wondering where and how to game instead. Personally, I don't want to pirate.

I like playing on console. But both Nintendo and Sony have annoyed me a lot during past years with their decisions and practices as well. 

As this is an external IP and this means Disney is involved, they probably cannot kill it with the snap of the finger. They probably have to fulfill some contractual obligations before they can cancel it.

Microsoft only did one major layoffs before Satya Nadella became CEO and that was 1,400 in January 2009 then 3,600 over the course of 18 months after that. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the layoffs in recent years.

Layoffs under Satya:

• 2014 - 18,000 / 14% of total workforce
• July 2022 - Just over 1,000 / Under 1%
• October 2022 - Nearly 1,000 / Under 0.5%
• January 2023 - 10,000 / 5%
• March 2023 - 689 in Seattle
• May 2023 - 716 at LinkedIn
• September 2023 - 276 - Mainly customer support and sales
• October 2023 - 668 at LinkedIn
• January 2024  - 1,900 from gaming / ~8% of gaming division
• May 2024 - Unknown numbers - Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games shutdown / Roundhouse Studios merged into ZeniMax Online Studios
• Summer 2024 - 1,000 - Mainly Azure division
• September 2024 - 650 from Xbox - Mainly in corporate and support
• January/February 2025 - 2,000 that were "underperforming"
• July 2025 - 9,000 / 4% of total workforce

As you can see layoffs started off slow in 2022 then quickly ramped up.

Total per year:

• 2014 - 18,000
• 2022 - 2,000
• 2023 - 12,349
• 2024 - 3,550 + unknown number when studios were shutdown
• 2025 - 11,000

Buy a Steam Deck!  

Fr though, it's picking what you believe is the lesser of evils.

I don't agree with punishing the developers for what Microsoft did and I don't agree with "They're going to get closed anyway so lets speed up their death" poorly thought out logic, I would say if you want to support Microsoft less but still want to support the developers then buy 3rd parties and 1st parties outside of the Microsoft Store (I.E. Steam) that way you're still supporting developers but you aren't giving Microsoft any extra money I.E. the 30% cut that Microsoft takes on every transaction on their store.

But I'm not going to attack anyone for still using things like Game Pass because it's an incredible deal and quite frankly people just don't have the money to spend on $80 releases. I'm also not going to attack anyone for still sticking with Xbox. Really they're all shit. What I'm going to do is probably buy the Asus Xbox Ally X and start my transition to PC, then once some Xbox/PC hybrid releases I will buy that, I won't really care if it's Xbox made or 3rd party made, but once I've bought that I will start transitioning all my non-Game Pass purchases over to Steam so I'll be cutting how much I support Microsoft down in ways I can whilst still supporting developers. If it turns out that ROG Xbox Ally X is good as a docked option I might even start my Steam transition this year for 3rd parties that aren't on Game Pass and begin cutting my support to Microsoft outside of developers they own and Game Pass.

My future is probably just PC (Game Pass & Steam for Non-Game Pass Releases) and Switch.

Nintendo will soon be the remaining console manufacturer, mark my words.

Anyways, if you wanna avoid tem as well, then I guess SteamDeck is a solid choice.