Related:

Microsoft cuts 4,800 Jobs, Half from Xbox division

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804401

Continuing the long trend of major tech companies making everything they touch worse.

I think some of these game studios got so content with Microsoft constantly paying that they forgot to make games that would actually sell.

South of Midnight took 7 years to make and cost $100 million to make... yet sold hardly any copies and I'm not even sure who they were trying to make it for.

Meanwhile you have studios like Sandfall and Warhorse pumping out games on a fraction of the budget that ship millions (and imho, make better games).

They will just continue smash thru exactly what is killing them because they do not know how to reset. More micro transactions, Halo 14-39, games launching before they're ready, price increases, etc. All of that looks good on paper, so they will take no action against. The XBOX is hitting icebergs, and instead of slowing down, they will just call for more speed.

Game Pass has caused a lot of direct sales losses to game developers in favor of Microsoft trying to find a Netflix-like cash cow for itself. The numbers never added up, but it is not a surprise everyone nodded and went along with it. I wonder what the career repercussions would be for speaking up - but it doesn’t matter because they are getting fired anyway.

Call of Duty alone lost $300 million: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/04/microsofts-game-pass-...

I look forward to the source code leaks.

Any details about the studio spin-outs? The rumors were that Double Fine etc. would be closed, but all we know now is that some of them are being sold to management and others are being sold to other investors. Nothing about any commensurate restructurings.

At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly shipped 3.8 million units of Tomodachi Life in two weeks, and 4 million of Pokopia in five. They're making actual games. Sony's obsession with prestige cinematic bloat has also put them in a slow-motion death spiral that's going to become painfully obvious in a few years.

  It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio

This is shockingly self-aware for microsoft

It was pretty rich seeing armchair video game industry analysts act like the new CEO was gonna usher in a new age for Microsoft's gaming division because she got to announce the updated logo and some games that would have obviously been in development long before she became CEO.

Microsoft is never going to figure out gaming. It's more art than engineering and they can barely manage the engineering with all the intervention from marketing and HR in their products.

To me it's mostly unfortunate that this has left PlayStation with no direct competition because they've noticed and leaned into the not-giving-a-shit attitude after they had such a great console generation with the PS4. It's kinda crazy that we're already almost due for a new console generation and there very little appetite for new consoles after this generation where it feels like it barely got started. And between graphics almost certainly at the point of diminishing returns, and hardware prices like they are right now, I can't imagine there's a market to sell something more capable than current gen consoles. The industry is in a very strange state.