Xbox 2025 Layoff Thread (crazy we need one...)

FFS

I don’t care about consoles , games and entertainment , this dogshit system will make the world worse every day

These companies, along with the greedy rich , are cancer that destroys communities, families, and individuals. All this shit just to make more + 100 M $ on top of the billions they already have

no one gives a fuck about your console war braindead shit " I will move to ps6 " Sony has been doing the same for the past few months, along with many other companies even outside the entertainment industry

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I believe enough data on the subject exists already to know that the way game development is structured is no longer compatible with the scope and budgets required nowadays.

Mass Effect Andromeda should have been a case study, i.e. they spent years prototyping various game designs (including using procedurally generated planets) and eventually landed on something half baked that was quite rushed despite taking 5 years to make. The bulk of the actual game we played was made in 18 months. The rest was just wasted time and money chasing dead ends.

So the point here within the broader context of the industry is there needs to be some sort of control in place whereby ‘creatives’ don’t just shoot in the dark for years whilst trying to find a foundation to build on when the actual game or its theme might not resonate with enough potential customers to justify its budget in the first place.

That’s the sad reality.

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I unfortunately think they might be finally sorting the management out and this is the consequence - brutal and without compassion, evaluating each game to see how much more it’ll need to release and whether it’ll ever make it back.

It sucks and I’ve often felt in the past Xbox needed to get a grip sometimes and be as ruthless as Sony, but then you remember just how harsh that can be on devs and studios.

It sucks, but I do kind of see the logic in today’s stuff (which I couldn’t so much for Tango as I’d thought HiFi Rush had done well) - just a shame there’s layoffs rather than everyone keeping their jobs and getting to go again with something new…

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Of everything that has come to light so far, Turn 10 is the only one that I find a bit egregious. I get it that the game didnt hit like they wanted and it took a long time, but they at least produced a really good game.

The other three are things that have been in development for 5+ years minimum and we have barely seen anything of. So not terribly surprising.

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The game being solid and not moving the needle is exactly why you have layoffs. The Sim racer Genera just can’t sustain a 500 person studio anymore

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Came back from doing a killer meal and am meet with all sorts of back up info holy s@@@.

I mean i knew pd and ew was in development hell but i did not imagine one studio would get the stake, geez. I hope for those layed off find their footing cause this is just depressing to see.

Also, in regards to pd, i won’t lie: I had a hunch in a while that things were not looking good for this game no matter how much i did not wish to see it. Zero talk of it from basically anyone, the amount of people who came and went from the studio and the amount of support studios that ended up having to help in this did not make things better whatsover.

However, i do feel like Xbox shoot themselves in the foot in a way that shjould be studied, how could they make a gameplay trailer for the game that is do be cancelled within one year. This screams Scalebound all over the place once more and that makes things worse.

Like, how to they think they come back from this? Am genuiely asking myself that.

Like i am genuiely dissapointed by the news.

The game flopped hard. They probably lost a shit ton of money on it.

I’m just glad they didn’t get closed.

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The problem is it needed to come out stellar, rather than just being good. Its had its thunder stolen from it by the Horizon series, and even in its present state, it’s still short of being a must-play title in my opinion.

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Can’t help but think are the other projects in good shape or did they survive to have something to cut in the next round of layoffs. Did you make it because they believe in the project or because cutting The Initiative’s Santa Monica salaries was the most effective way to meet the quota.

Nasty work.

This sucks and hurts even though I don’t work for Xbox. It almost seems like Xbox had been taken too many breaks and then comes Daddy Microsoft to inspect and Xbox turns out wanting, I think they could have spaced this out instead of the mass layoffs.

Yeah it’s unfortunate but I love racing games and found Forza Motorsport a little sterile at launch.

It’s got better, but the problem is when FH5 comes screaming out of the gate in an opener that has me grinning like a child, they needed more polish and more to do - plus a bit more fun.

It’s stuck between the more-fun Horizon and the more-serious sims like Assetto etc - so I was hoping for a little more fun even if it was just a great soundtrack (I know, less of a sim thing), and Horizon unfortunately shows fun sells more

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Absolutely love the latest Forza Motorsport.

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Don’t forget it’s 9000 layoffs across all of MS, not just Xbox.

I feel like what happened is MS gave each divisions target layoffs numbers and said: ‘‘figure it out’’!

At the end of the day I doubt anyone in Xbox management wanted to do the cuts, but you have to look at who you can cut who will affect the bottom line the least in order to get higher profit margins and hopefully lower future layoffs and make the company heads happy.

If MS is really chasing that 30% profit margins across all divisions, it’ll be hard to hi no matter what they do.

That one seems so brutal because it felt too much what have you done for me lately . I know the game flopped but the other entries performed well, so why not trust them to bounce back ? I guess with multiplatform push they might’ve felt they can’t compete against gran turismo

I think the market for simcade console racers is drying up. Sim racers have gone into the sim racing genre with force feedback wheels etc. and arcade fans prefer Horizon. It’s not just Forza that’s struggled. Codemasters’ F1 series isn’t doing so well either and its WRC rally game has been canned by EA.

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Great news, this has nothing to do with that! have a good day

GT doesn’t really move the needle like it used to either

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Yep and the sims that are left are often the more hardcore ones from smaller dev teams and with players who yep buy the full kit, just like the flight sim lot

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They’re making more money than ever, as I understand it, and have hardware plans front and centre. This is not it, this is an expression of what this is: chasing the biggest piece of pie with as little fat as possible.

Fat being, you know, people’s lives.

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Game needed a lot of cooking after release, the campaing was barebones and you could tell there was not too much work on it done.

AI was too weak, and hell, it’s very important on a racing game…

Also the game’s performance on Series S and PC was oof, and filled with bugs, it’s still sitting on 40%ish positive reviews on Steam.

I really expected more from it considering how long the development cycle was… at least the online was good tho

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