It is interesting, but how insightful are comments like:

"sony, EA, THQ, now microsoft? this gunna get worse before it gets better"

"Microsoft bleeding confirmed????? Expect to see no xbox price drops for some time, heck they might even be considering a price hike in the spring when sales die down as it is no longer profitable to sell 360's so cheap in the non- holiday months"

"It looks like every gaming company, except for possibly Nintendo, will be affected by the economic crisis. Hopefully things start looking up in 09."

It's clear these kids have no idea what they're talking about. Ender and Comrade Tovya got it right, the recession is a nice and proper excuse to dump non-essential personnel with little-to-no repercussions. Sony did something similar. Notice how their stock price went up after they announced job cuts? A company that makes BILLIONS of dollars a year in profits and has a mountainous warchest... being compared to small publishers struggling to stay afloat? Please. Educate yourselves (not you NJ5).

When news like this comes out, it becomes salient how most of these people are just kids.

A couple points of facts:

1. Microsoft is hugely profitable. The worries are more around how much the profit will grow. Not if they are going to be profitable.

2. No company does a 10,000 workers "stealth layoffs". Reducing the workforce by 10,000 (or 5,000) by any company will be something that will be communicated officially both internally and externally.

3. Every company should be ready to asjust to the economic slowdown. All will tighten the belt and manage the expenses more tightly. This may mean less hiring and reduced investment in new ventures.

For fairness let's wait for Sony's financial report before saying they're doing better than Toyota... They're suffering from the same Yen strength issue and Japanese electronics exports are also severely down.

 Toyota are expecting £1.1Billion losses in their next financial report and the Motoring industry has been hit harder than the electeonics one so id still say Sony is better off

The only reason why we know Toyota's number and not Sony's is that Sony hasn't recently updated their forecast (while Toyota updated it twice in consecutive months). From what I've read and some calculations based on their revenue and profit margins I wouldn't be surprised if Sony posted an equal or worse loss. All I'm saying is let's wait and see, things are just getting started in this recession.

10'000??? hmmm.. that's not good at all

I am calling BS on this article and the rumor. So, MS is rumored to cut 10K? With news that huge in the world of business, we'd see something on Bloomberg, CNN.com or other financial sites. Guess what? Nada - nothing. It's funny that NO major networks, newspapers and media outlets have picked up on it.

Nice bait-n-switch, Spartan. What was your reason to even post this POC? The PS3 bots kill me. What I find funny is how GeBX could post real news - from legit media sources - and someone is gonna pass off a blog as a rumor.

Here's the real news - Sony IS cutting 16,000 workers total. That was plastered all over the news. Not just on blogs, but newspapers and networks. This? MS laying off 10,000? Nice joke thread./sarcasm

Just more cherry-picked propaganda to make Sony PS3 bots feel great about their superior investment. Sony's woes aren't going away any time soon.

Thread = PHAIL.

Hmmm, this argument seems familiar, but everyone seems to have switched sides :)

Most of MS's problems are likely coming from their consulting arm (one of the their cash cows along with office) thanks to the downturn. Also the high profile fiasco with the London Stock Exchange probably didn't help them win many new customers and god only knows how much the six-sigma contract MS had with them adds up to when a major stock exchange is down for 7 hours (and on the day fannie and freddie were bailed out, ouch!).

The slower than usual uptake of vista and office 2008 are probably not helping things. The slow erosion of their consumer desktop market share and the rise of netbooks should all be worrying to them in the long term. It may be that they are in the same position now as IBM was in the 80s.

However, for the forseeable future it's almost incocievable that they would actually post a loss. You may not want to buy any stock, but MS isn't going anywhere.

This actually isn't a rumour. My brother works at microsoft and most of the layoffs have already taken place and they do go into effect in January. The past of couple of weeks have been very hectic and stressfull with guys high up on the food chain working all nighters and expecting everyone to do the same.

Microsoft's layoffs have less to do with the economy and more with the structure of their business. Competing with google has forced microsoft to focus on areas they weren't before and move away from other areas. For all the layoffs they will be doing, they will also be hiring in several other departments.

Yeah well, true or not, we'll see in a few weeks I suppose.

I do have my doubts that 10,000 people are going to be laid off. I assume that it will be far less than people think (if any at all).

"Mini-Microsoft" has thrown other warnings in the air that never came to fruition, so the possibility exists that it could be less of a cut than anticipated.

At Verizon (many years back), rumors of rifts and layoffs came all the time... generally, it was never as bad as we thought.

My guess is that MS cuts a few thousand people or none at all. MS is not the same as Sony or any other company for that matter. They have 5 dozen billion dollars sitting in their coffers.

Therefore, even if they do cut people, it has NOTHING to do with financial troubles, and EVERYTHING to do with preventive maintenance. MS is the big dog because they make the right moves before disaster strikes... instead of being like a lot of companies and reacting after the hurricane strikes.