Well companies have bets on the future, doesn’t always have to be right but they bet with their investments and hope that’s where it goes.
1 Like
Hopefully a lot of these people can band together, put their resources together and make their own game studios.
1 Like
With what capital?
2 Likes
Someone here said layoff will help stocks. It actually didn’t.
1 Like
Stumbled upon this:
https://x.com/astaranx/status/1762681817188941957?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
Aside coming from console war guy, the fact is this is such a General Shepherd MW2 original heel turn move.
3 Likes
I highly doubt they can even hope to get some market share out of Meta and now Apple. Business will want a business product, not a toy. Sony also isn’t throwing billions of dollars in a yearly basis at PSVR R&D, unlike the other main competitors.
1 Like
Consoles will most likely stay relevant for a while, but there is definitely a need to diversify and Xbox is being the smarter ones here by opening up and being more pro-consumer and giving us more access in more places due to the market changes. That makes me glad I’m supporting them in the long term, and when I see Matt Piscatella backing it up with numbers and us seeing Sony’s bad financials and shrinking console sales and software sales even with more consoles in the marketplace, you know somethings wrong and that unless you make a move, you’ll end up dying a slow death. Xbox leadership these was most likely restructuring to be able to attack those changes more efficiently.
I also cannot wait to see Gamepass added to every COD commercials. Hopefully the deal with Sony is over and MS can start doing it this year!
6 Likes
Sony layoffs stood on their front page for less than a day. A fucking day. And even before that it slowed down considerably, despite Sony layoffs being worse. Hear me out.
I know layoffs are all shitty no matter what, but by worse I mean there is no $70B merger excuse for them. Where as even smaller mergers typically have a 30% workforce reduction upon completion, Microsoft’s was in the single digits (this is why I fear more will come). Meanwhile, again, Sony doesn’t have this excuse. In fact, they’re the #1 console manufacturer, who also coincidentally raised game prices, console prices and subscriptions… and all this isn’t even enough. SM2 is their fastest-selling title of all time and even that isn’t enough for Insomniac, the developer carrying PS5 on it’s back since the gen started, to not get hit with hefty layoffs. Ditto for their main prestigious studio Naughty Dog. Closing down entire studios, cancelling games, rumors of more to come… the list goes on (what’s it at now, 4 studio closures in 4 years? And 8+ in 10 years?)
How all of the above is either downplayed, shrugged off, not given even a modicum of the same energy as Microsoft’s layoffs and close to being forgotten so fast is simply wild, especially given that both have roughly the same percentage of layoffs. Just absolutely wild.
People that say there is no such thing as “Xbox tax” deserve to be slapped by an ethereal hand coming through their screen/monitor.
24 Likes
No where did I say it had to be a big triple A game, it easily could be a cell phone game made for a few thousand or less.
They also can go to different investors and show them what they’ve done and if people want to invest in their potential, they can do that.
I agree, but vc investment has plummeted in this space. It’s just a bad situation all round.
2 Likes
There are posters on this very forum who love sticking the boot into Xbox any time they mess up that suspiciously go missing whenever there’s any bad Sony news…
14 Likes
And now EA has laid off 670 employees and canceled a Star Wars game, what a brutal year for the industry, but cancelling a Star Wars game from Respawn of all studios seems odd to me, a first person Star Wars game from Respawn would be one of the safest games ever to make, would likely be a mega hit.
3 Likes
After seeing what Sony is paying for a Spiderman license, a mega hit isn’t really enough.
10 Likes
Well said 
The bias and double standard is at full display here.
And its only February. This will be a really bad year for the gaming industry.
For Star Wars its probably the ridiculous licensing fees from Disney. They making bank (it was almost 100 million for Spider-Man 2) but is it worth in the end if every of your partners stops licensing? idk
2 Likes
I’m guessing Ubisoft will be the next big one sadly. Take-Two is the last ‘big’ publisher to not announce anything as Epic has theirs in September.
1 Like
Take Two I expect will start to cut non-GTA teams down, and the GTA5 support teams next, then finally once GTA6 goes gold and they only need the ongoing support teams for that, they’ll come swinging for the main development teams.
Seems to be no reward or thanks in this business, you help create a massively successful product and are then ditched even if they’ve made huge profits, in order to please shareholders further in the next quarter by showing “they’re strict with costs”…
I work in an IT department where we support the main business - IT isn’t the firm’s actual line of business - and too often we’ve heard new starters being shown around “this is IT, this is a cost not a profit making part of the business” even if attitudes have begun to improve
3 Likes
There is also Nintendo, they don’t had any layoffs yet.
2 Likes
True, although Nintendo typically avoid layoffs somehow.
Previously their CEO even reduced his salary to avoid any (I’m not aware of any other gaming publisher doing this):
1 Like
Its a nice gesture but one less CEO salary does not equal 1000 normal employees. Maybe at Reddit or Activision.
Nintendo has also the ‘problem’ with Japanese laws where hire and fire is just more complicated. So they are more conservative with hiring in phases where everyone else baloons their employee count to insane levels and then has to fire everybody when the gamble doesnt pay off.
8 Likes