In her latest company newsletter Resetting XBOX, CEO Asha Sharma revealed plans to reorganize, which included letting go of four studios and laying off 1,600 workers. But these are not the only changes happening to the company.
Asha once again makes shocking revelations about Xbox:
We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger. Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management. Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined.
Xbox is cutting out that bureaucracy from that puzzling 14 layers to 5, or 3 where possible. This is a plan to simplify and streamline operations and narrow their focus.
Asha also announced a new COO. Replacing Dave McCarthy is Helen Chiang, who has proven her mettle at Mojang running MineCraft.
Unlike Dave, Helen is being given ‘end-to-end profit-and-loss responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services.’ That’s unprecedented power/responsibility for an XBOX COO, and Helen will answer directly to Asha.
