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As you've probably seen, Xbox has announced 3,200 job cuts as part of a major restructuring plan, with 1,600 of those cuts taking place today - including at popular Xbox studios and publishers such as Obsidian, Activision and Bethesda.
Xbox boss Asha Sharma effectively confirmed this herself earlier today, mentioning that "we are also making reductions across other units" (in addition to the four studios that were revealed to be departing the brand) and naming "Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios".
"We are also making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects. These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios. None of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions."
Since then, various job losses at Obsidian and Activision have started to get attention on social media, and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has stated that both id Software and Zenimax Online Studios have lost staff members.
In her statement earlier today, Sharma revealed that Xbox has "lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested" in a typical year when it comes to first-party studios, and outright admitted that Xbox isn't in a healthy place as a business.
"Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX."
"Since 2018, we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined. We now find ourselves competing not only with the largest publishers, but also with smaller independent studios. 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; in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested. As we reset XBOX, we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision."
The Xbox CEO has highlighted three key aims as part of the major restructuring plan, one of which is to "reset our content portfolio". It's clear the likes of Obsidian and id Software remain key focuses as part of this, but evidently even they've been forced to suffer layoffs as part of the process.
A sad situation all around, then, and here's hoping everyone affected lands on their feet ASAP.