The Xbox gaming arm of Microsoft had an interesting final three months of the 2023 calendar year.
It had just launched Starfield, which proved to be Bethesda’s biggest launch ever. It was also in this quarter that Microsoft finalized its merger with the Activision-Blizzard-King conglomerate for $69 billion.
As the dust from this acquisition settled, however, we have recently found out that Xbox has given the ax to 1,900 employees across its studios, including the newly acquired Activision Blizzard and the ZeniMax-owned Bethesda studios.
As reported by IGN, Phil Spencer has notified the affected employees through a message circulated throughout the company.
According to Spencer, the downsizing is part of their efforts to attain a “sustainable cost structure” that will keep the company afloat as it grows in size.
These latest cuts follow an apparent downsizing across the industry, with layoffs reported at several major publishers including Epic Games and Sony.
In any case, the Xbox exec promised that he and his team would be “navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible.”
The message also acknowledged the contributions of the 1,900 developers who will be laid off as part of this “sustainable cost structure,” stating that they all “played an important part” in the individual successes of their studios and that they should all take pride in everything that they’ve attained for themselves and their companies.
This comes a month after Xbox announced a restructuring of their two acquired companies at the executive level. CEOs from Activision, Blizzard, and King are to report directly to Xbox chief Matt Booty, while the ZeniMax executives - including Matt Firor and Todd Howard - will report to Jill Braff.
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