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Microsoft recently made the decision to layoff roughly 9,000 employees across various departments, with the Xbox division taking major hits – a heartbreaking decision that will have a serious impact on Xbox Game Pass in the years ahead. Xbox Game Pass is the key to Microsoft’s gaming strategy. By offering day one games and instant access to a huge library of titles, Microsoft is effectively trying to make Xbox Game Pass the video game equivalent of Netflix.
In order for the Xbox Game Pass strategy to work, Microsoft has to ensure that there is a steady pipeline of new game releases for the service. To accomplish this, Microsoft has pulled the trigger on industry-shaking acquisitions, securing high-profile day one releases for Xbox Game Pass through games like Bethesda’s open-world sci-fi RPG Starfield and Activision’s blockbuster first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Microsoft also built its own studio, The Initiative, and has had its existing studios develop new games for PC, Xbox, and Game Pass.
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Report: Microsoft Begins Making Significant Layoffs
New reports indicate that Microsoft is going ahead with significant layoffs to its workforce, with many affecting its Xbox gaming division.
Xbox Game Pass has been on a hot streak recently, but the massive Microsoft layoffs paint a bleak picture of the subscription service’s future. I recently opined that Xbox Game Pass was in the midst of its Avengers: Endgame Portal moment, and expressed concern that this is the peak of the service. Like the MCU, Xbox Game Pass is in danger of entering a post-Endgame slump, and the recent developments certainly point in that direction. The widespread layoffs at Microsoft have wreaked absolute carnage on the future of Xbox Game Pass, with the Perfect Dark reboot canceled and its developer The Initiative shut down without ever producing a single product. Rare’s long-in-development Everwild has been canned as well, meaning it will likely be years before we see the next game from the studio, with the last being 2018’s Sea of Thieves.
Canceled Xbox Games After the Microsoft Layoffs
- Everwild
- Perfect Dark
- ZeniMax MMO
Everwild and Perfect Dark are games that were announced years ago, and in Perfect Dark‘s case, gameplay of the reboot was shown just last year. Microsoft pulling the plug on these projects will no doubt shake consumer confidence in the company to reliably deliver on its promises. In turn, this could lead to people becoming less confident in Xbox Game Pass, especially since the resources and investments that went into those canceled games are now wasted. Microsoft will likely ink more third-party deals to try to fill the gaps in the Xbox Game Pass calendar, but it’s still devastating to have these games ripped away before they could be completed.
Major Xbox developers Bethesda, Halo Studios, Turn 10 Studios, and Blizzard have all been hit by the layoffs as well.
The Microsoft layoffs even reportedly impacted Call of Duty studios, with Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios, and Raven Software said to have been hit. Call of Duty is consistently one of the top-selling games every year, and Microsoft itself has reported billions in profit. These layoffs were not only unnecessary, but they have caused severe damage to the Xbox brand and Xbox Game Pass that will take years to recover from. With a new Xbox console on the horizon, Microsoft’s recent decisions do not make a very compelling argument for anyone to invest in its gaming hardware, and may make some fans worried about the future of Xbox Game Pass as well.
