Xbox Is Doing Great — By the Way, You’re Fired | Unpacked

Thank you Nick for that final gag. It was therapeutic for me, as someone who got laid off from Xbox recently

*shrugs* I've pretty much given up on gaming be it console, BYO PC, or handheld. New stuff is mostly dead to me. I'm now looking back to both 30+ years of content on GoG and Steam or console emulation. There is legit a lifetime of content there. And 1. They can't take that away from me. (Generally) 2. It doesn't require some high priced 5090 with fake frame generation to run. Depending on the console I could probably run it on a potato. I've been a gamer since dad brought home an Atari 5200 back in the early 80's. It's taken corp greed and BS for me to table flip and say I'm done, but congrats Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo. Mission accomplished.

How often do shareholders keep falling for this? Yeah our books look great, but ignore all the experienced employees we kicked out the door. We're doing fine!

As someone who’s worked in the heavily corporate, private sector his whole adult life I can tell you this is industry standard. I thought they had woken up after the Italian plumber/ghost grabber incident, but apparently they still think it’s BAU.

"We're doing better than we ever have. But you're getting laid off, sorry" Hey, that's how I lost my job too lol Xbox is probably still reeling from the Actiblizzion purchase and laying off people to make it seem like they're not in the red. $69 billion isn't an amount of money you can make back quickly, even with Call of Duty.

I work for an American tech company, but not in games. I’ve been laid off in the last two years. While I can’t speak for these companies, I do feel like there’s some nuance that’s getting missed that I think I have some context for. Tech jobs have always been boom and bust. The dotcom bubble is a great example, and the stark contrast between 2008/2009 and the mid 2010s are too. These jobs are expensive to hire for, and when folks’ wallets are strapped then things can slow down a lot. Tech jobs were plentiful in the 2010s as cloud computing allowed companies to rent infrastructure rather than having to build and operate it themselves. While there was a dip at the beginning of COVID, tech jobs were totally bananas during the pandemic. Everyone had money to spend and time to kill and everyone wanted tech stuff. Most importantly, interest rates were really low during this time. Folks talk about interest rates “being high” these days, but the 2010s/early 2020s had crazy low interest rates. There was a solid decade plus where things were amazing for tech workers. So coming off of a crazy boom, tech is now going through a bust. The hiring sprees of the last 10+ years are being cut back (and/or shipped overseas), and belts are being tightened. Nobody knows what the next few years will bring, but the idea of uncertain tariffs on all of the things you manufacture and rules that change every day adds a lot of uncertainty to this bust. But when it comes to any communication that could be public, you’ve gotta treat it like a sales call. You have to say the company is doing fine. You have to say this is for the best. Investors are hanging off of your every word and if you say “we hired too many people and nobody is buying games for full price any more” then it’s bad for everyone. When folks have a duty to protect the company and their investors, they can’t be honest with you (even if they really want to). Anyway, I agree this sucks and it sucks to be shown the door. I just think that expecting true transparency is unreasonable, and there’s more to it than AI. Best wishes for those folks hitting the job market right now. There are jobs out there. Good luck. Edit: if you ever get the chance to get in on an investor call for a large company, read the investor report before listening to the call. The report is where the truth is, and the call is for selling to people . This is why you only see actual numbers that show the economic slowdown from news websites that read the report.

One gigantic counterpoint is that Claire Obscur delivered an uppercut the entire industry by showing that a small, driven studio with passionate leadership can create a game with incredible artistry. Meanwhile, games like Forspoken, Redfall, and Mindseye all come out with giant bloated budgets and studios. So to some extent, reducing the size and scope of game studios can be helpful to reduce bloat and potentially hone in on a more driven and passionate group of employees to drive well crafted games forward. I wouldn’t lie and say that if I was him and I looked at Starfield or Avowed I would say we need to streamline our company, not continue in the same direction. That being said, layoffs usually proceed in a hack and slash method and don’t focus on whether someone is a high-quality employee or not, but just chop hundreds of employees off seemingly at random. Will this produce driven and creative mindsets in the staff? Or most likely Xbox will pull in Visa holders (who haven’t been sent home by the Orange) and force them to work at slave wages.

I always thought Xbox was the weakest of the major console brands, but I never thought it would get this bad. What happens when Microsoft decides not to make hardware anymore? What happens to the generations of players that invested in their platform?

I genuinely always forget that Xbox is still a console or that Microsoft makes games. If not for the couple of people in the office on game pass I wouldn’t have heard about anything they do compared to PC, Sony or Nintendo games and consider Xbox to be a gaming PC for people that don’t have the money or skills to get a real one. So it’s baffling when I see them still treated as a real player and more so when I’m reminded how much they actually own. Shame they clearly don’t care beyond corporate raiding; imagine if Rare hadn’t been bought by them all those years ago.

Another great episode of The Layoff Report!

Spencer has, bravely, committed to be the last one out the door, securely padlock it behind him and toss the key out the window of his Lambo as he drives away laughing.