I wonder if this means more 1st party games skipping day one Game Pass. Or more of a push to get Game Pass subs to pay for the premium upgrades which usually includes 5 day early access and DLC.

-missed Shika's post-

I'd give this news a 8/10

+ No studio Closures

+ No announced Projects being cancelled 

Really it was better than I could have expected, still sucks that they will continue to layoff over the next year. 

This had to be the most laughable aspect of what I've read! Probably overrules the 100 million Game Pass subs goal.

I’ll take 5 divested over 5 closed.

They have ~500 million per day right now. Mainly thanks to Candy Crush, Minecraft, CoD, and WoW.

I agree. This was the best outcome for these 5 studios with Xbox looking to shrink the number of studios it has and focus on its biggest IPs. 

Still sucks so many people are getting laid off.

I can't imagine Phil's expression reading this. It's hard to fault him for wanting to give developers the means to make the games they want to make, but learned the hard way that you still need to have some reins on the teams.

It’s not XBOX that needs to be reset it’s the entire industry.

Yeah, when you think about it, since the start of this generation, Xbox has closed 2 studios (Arkane Austin and The Initiative), merged one (Roundhouse merged into Zenimax Online's Wisconsin studio), and divested 6 (Tango Gameworks [initially closed for 2 months, but then Xbox found a buyer], Arkane Lyon, Compulsion, Undead Labs, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory). 

Sony, since late 2020 when PS5 released, has closed 7 studios (Pixelopus, Neon Koi Berlin and Helsinki, London Studio, Firewalk, Dark Outlaw, and Bluepoint Games), and shut down every team at Japan Studio except for the Astro Bot team which became Team Asobi.