Microsoft is rumored to have a devastating amount of layoffs happening in its gaming division.
The rumor about these layoffs broke at the start of this week. Jason Schreier, writing for Bloomberg, described this as “substantial cuts across the entire group.” Tom Warren, writing for the Verge, cited another source claiming that the company actually plans to restructure their Xbox distribution business in Central Europe. If true, they will actually close Xbox operations in some of these countries and regions.
That takes us to today. Industry veteran George Broussard shared this rumor on his Bluesky:
News has reported imminent Xbox layoffs but I’m hearing internal developer stuff where people at most studios are anxious and worried. Word that entire studios may be shuttered. Expectation is 1000-2000 people. Xbox unit has about 10k people in it?, so 10-20%? Good luck to all involved. Brutal.
We aren’t sure where Broussard got the figure about Xbox employees. We do know that Microsoft Gaming as a whole has about 20,000 employees. This represents their entire gaming division, encapsulating Bethesda/ZeniMax, Activision Blizzard King, Xbox hardware, services, and Xbox Game Studios.
If we assume that Broussard is referring to Xbox Game Studios, that would cover 14 studios overall:
- The Coalition
- Compulsion Games
- Double Fine
- Halo Studios
- The Initiative
- InXile Entertainment
- Mojang Studios
- Ninja Theory
- Obsidian Entertainment
- Playground Games
- Rare
- Turn 10 Studios
- Undead Labs
- World’s Edge
Xbox Game Studios also has a publishing division, who works with external studios to make games. These include Towerborne, Ara: History Untold, and Contraband.
We can’t speculate on any of these rumors as Microsoft has officially declined to comment to Jason Schreier. Microsoft has also not announced their next earnings release date, which would be when they could announce or comment on these layoffs. But if Microsoft follows the same schedule they’ve held for years, the next release date should be at the end of next month.
Given the scale of Microsoft’s operations, the number of game developers who could be laid off and studios that could be closed is potentially devastating. Fans would be right to question it since we know that Microsoft Gaming is currently on a generational run in terms of games published and released, Game Pass subscriptions, game sales and overall revenue. It’s also important to recognize that this is part of the now three-year wave of layoffs that we are still hoping will come to an end soon.
For now, we’ll wait for when Microsoft confirms – or denies – these layoffs and studio and division closures.
