The nonsense reaction to what is in effect the tech industries reaction to a global recession is utterly mind blowing. Nobody knows the business rationalisation they don’t know which roles are affected or why.
These are people losing their jobs. Families devastated. It’s horrific. And I think there is a valid discussion about the morality of this sort of thing in general.
But the attempts to rationalise the limited information available is embarrassing. The limited information we know is that the studios have been relatively untouched in the grand scheme of things and the cuts that have been made are specific and targeted. Rather than everyone cuts 5% sort of thing. It’s likely these were in the main redundant roles or simply areas not performing as well as would be liked. But either way focus on the awful human tragedy rather than the ‘soothsaying nonsense’ about what it means. It’s happening every day, people in the games industry are laid off. And then people are hired. Teams are restructured.
The overall direction of travel for Microsoft and indeed XGS is expansionism they are growing their staff levels. But there will sadly along the way be the need to change things and structures and react to the economy. Cos this is big tech. They aren’t doing anyone any favours.
Ultimately, to me it matters more that all employees laid off can find something new and fullfilling - it is great to see other devs still at 343i and other studios trying to help them as much as they can - and that the studio can move forward and recover from that.
I totally agree, I loved Infinite’s campaign. Their first take on an open world Halo was more than decent IMO, all the next game needs is more variety in environments, do more boss fights (Infinite’s bosses were great!), add some epic set-pieces like the double scarab fight and some new enemy types/weapons and you have a guaranteed amazing Halo game. The 30 seconds of fun was there in full force in Halo Infinite, gameplay was god-tier.
I don’t mention it much, but that’s because I feel very confident in these peoples skills and the fact that a lot of other studios outside Xbox is hiring, including the competition. I think the biggest loss here is for Xbox, losing so much talent. The devs and their new homes are winners in the end.
You guys also lost yall shit and excused me of being anti-Xbox/MS(when I’m a big Xbox fan lol) when I RIGHTFULLY said Microsoft POSSIBLY won’t be able to make large scale purchases like AB due to the recession in tech and layoffs. Yall didn’t believe instead jumped on me(including the mods) with kneejerk reactions, and now here we are.
I’m not taking joy in this especially people losing their jobs, but don’t excuse people of making real life predictions of being anti-Xbox.
While I’ll never condone anyone being ganged up on, especially by mods, this shouldn’t have much impact on the acquisition plans outside of possibly giving some regulators a bullet point in their opposition of it.
Not sure if you’re implying this here, but I’ve seen some online ask how they can lay off 10k people while spending 70 billion on ABK. The reality is lay offs are done to lessen operating costs and increase profits. This has nothing to do with their cash reserves that they are being penalized for having (possibly through fines or taxation, not sure which to be honest). Basically they are able to spend so much without sweating it because that 70 billion will be put to better use by investing it in a company like ABK, which can then provide additional profit, than sitting in some account being taxed.
In the end, this won’t do much to stop MS from trying to acquire ABK.
I find those “predictions” to be inaccurate and wrong.
The reality is companies are contracting to minimize their expenses during these tough times while expanding to have growth potential after the tough times are over. The current economic situation has little to no impact on strategic expansions.
Google laid off 12000 while spending anywhere from $2 - $4 Billion per year to have the NFL Sunday Ticket rights.
Amazon laid of 18000 while planning to spend $35 Billion on data center expansions.
Ah I think they are arguing that Microsoft won’t be able to make any further large scale investments beyond Activision rather than saying they will pull out of the Activision acquisition. I went back and read the original conversation they are refnring to and the context is a bit clearer there, though I’m not sure I agree with their summarisation of it.
Ah well. I’m keeping out of this one. By the way did anyone see the recent news that Microsoft is looking to invest 10 billion dollars in ChatGPT? Interesting stuff.
I saw that. It’s yet another example of strategic expansion for potential growth despite the current economic conditions.
Curious what their ROI/Risk/Reward analysis on ChatGPT looks like. Somewhere I saw a possible driver being the application for a Search Engine to take on Google.
Also saw they’re including availability in Azure which you can guarantee they would try to use to drive adoption by companies using AWS or Google Cloud, make the value of using their services greater by making it easier to use the Open AI stuff if you use their platform. The Bing implications absolutely sounded interesting as well.
This isnt a surprise to me. Fortune interviewed hundreds of CEOs on the 2023 outlook. Over 60% of them said they are already planning layoffs. Over half that said that were planning a major layoff (defined as more than 30% of their workforce). This appears to be the onset of a very very grim year.
