themightyant

... and all the other pseudo maths. This isn't how subscriptions work, most people don't subscribe for one month then quit, the reason companies like subscriptions so much is that on average most people STAY subscribed. Managing subscriber churn is key.

It's about regular, consistent income, not just a bump to revenue when a studio releases a game ever 5-7 years.

@Mr-Cage I don't think that many PC gamers care about Game Pass. Not least the PC app is ass.

@Fiendish-Beaver @Coletrain have Xbox ever said this doesn't work for them? If so I haven't heard it.

In fact we've heard that Game Pass is propping up other failing parts of the Xbox business.

Or put another way. Asha is having a huge XBOX RESET. If Day 1 Games REALLY don't work don't you think the first thing they would change is this? And yet we haven't seen that AT ALL.

It's pretty disastrous. Services like this ONLY work at scale. While 30 million is nothing to sniff at, they can't offer as much content as they can if they have 50 million subscribers or more. The model still works, but to be better they need more subscribers.

Certainly not at launch. I've already played it 3 times which is 2 times more than any other Ubisoft open world game. They are too sprawling to be repayable, it's not like a tight 8-15 hour action adventure unless you only focus on the main questline... but in this game you'd then miss most of the good stuff.

Too many games not enough time. Maybe one day.

Need a Tardis / DeLorean / Hyperbolic Time Chamber... let me know when there's one on Temu!

@oopsiezz 100% agree. I've had a look at most of these, and while some of them review well in their niche, they aren't for me, subjectively that makes it a poor list.

@betterthings Also worth highlighting that she hired Matthew Ball to be Xbox's new CSO (Chief Strategy Officer). We know he is super-keen on things like UGC (User Generated Content) for growth.

You can read his annual State of Gaming report on his website and get a clear idea what his general manifesto is. See page 89 onwards.

The Five biggest areas of revenue growth in video games in 2026.

• UGC / Roblox - Follow their model (good luck)
• Non-core markets - APAC, LATAM, Middle East, etc. + mobile
• Advertising - Expect more.
• External Development - Spend more on outsourcing staff, 3rd party partnerships, fewer internal staff. (seeing this now?)
• D2C and alternative payment methods - On the surface not as applicable to a platform holder... except they might try and sidestep, or decrease, Sony's 30% fees and push regulators for more open platforms, especially if they aren't selling many units.

I'm reading that as she wants more games like Candy Crush and to further monetise Minecraft making it more a platform like Roblox. Neither of which are what I want to hear.

@Millionski Plenty of AA games have smaller budgets that don't require 1 million sales to succeed... but they have an even higher failure rate than AAA.

This idea that lower budget games suddenly succeed isn't based on any reality outside of a few outliers like Expedition 33.

It's an utterly ridiculous statement, not based in any reality.

Even something like Roblox, which has more daily players that XBox and PlayStation combined "only" has around 125 million daily players... and she wants to hit 8 times that while also gutting their workforce. LOL

Yes, Yes, YES!!! Dew it!

@MinervaX76 I agree they likely did need to shed some dead management layers, I just think they are overstating it - and other things - to try and rationalise the cuts.

I agree ABK, Zenimax need to be bought closer into the fold and not duplicate management roles. But you can't just give - say Matt Booty - or whoever is now in charge of Xbox Studios another 15 studios to manage. That doesn't work either.

@AgentCooper Honeslty I've not managed to play that much. Super busy with work and enjoying the weather /being outside in my spare time more than usual. But i'm 4-5 dungeons down and enjoying it. Am away this w/end but need to push on asap to finish in time.

What are you playing? Anything good?

@MinervaX76 I suspect the 14 layers of management is an absolute worst case that Asha has deliberately mentioned to make people think "oh these cuts are necessary" when in reality it's likely far fewer most of the time. It's like when she mentioned "we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested" it's all very deliberate.

But I don't believe 5-10 layers is all that crazy. I used to run a creative business that was "only" 50 people strong and we usually had up to 4 - 5 layers of management even within that. e.g. Boss -> Project directors - > Creative directors -> Client liasons -> Section leads (sometimes) - > Designers / Developers etc.

I'd imagine when you are dealing with 12,500 Xbox staff, with individual studios in the hundreds, with thousands more outsourced staff (artists, musicians, voice actors, marketers etc), all within a larger parent company like Microsoft then having around 10 layers of management sounds about right to me. Her flat structure of "3 where possible" sounds like some type of utopian nightmare like at Valve... great if you work there unsupervised, but not very good at actually delivering games!

It's 5% of game revenue which when you consider the cost of developing the engine AND the cost of having to re-train all your staff to use a new engine including all the additional development time that takes then 5% isn't actually that much.

@MinervaX76 See post above. There were many, many more.

But of course... "the plan is the plan until it's not the plan"... but if they wanted to change engine now from Unreal 5 to IW then you would likely add additional years to the next Halo game development.

@Markatron84 Indeed. They Halo Studios have even put out whole videos about what they are doing in Unreal Engine 5

@Fiendish-Beaver @Ooccoo_Jr I don't think it's "so many" that think it's a good thing... it's a handful that are desperately trying to make it seem like everything going on at Xbox is not that bad.

That all said there is nuance to it. Xbox has found themselves in such a bad place that they have to make severe cuts like this in order to steady the ship. Lets be clear that isn't a good thing as some are saying, but it is what needs to happen if we want Xbox to last another decade under Microsoft.

The reality is they gambled buying Zenimax and ABK adding over 15,000 jobs to Xbox HOPING that they would get tens of millions more Game Pass subscribers. When that didn't work out they had to go multi-platform to try and gain more revenue to cover all their additional costs. When that didn't work they now have to cut the wage bill DRASTICALLY to get their business to the right size that their customers can actually support, else Microsoft will cut them.

That is where we are now. Sad times, but all quite predictable sadly.

@MinervaX76 They've already moved on from Slipspace and are using Unreal for the next Halo. (unless the plan changes again)

@FarmDog08 I play more than enough to make my membership worthwhile, but the last few months have had very little for me. Didn't even enjoy FH6, it just felt like more of the same game i've already played several times. Thankfully there was so much I haven't already played to keep making it worthwhile.

One of the worst lists they've added.

@betterthings @carlos82 @NeoRatt Just to add that reportedly half of id is being laid off primarily from the programming / coding side which sounds like idTech to me. But we will have to wait and see.
Sad times.

Sad to see. I hope Asha can sort everything out at Xbox but it's going to be a long, long road. You can't just streamline all the studios and tools and engines and more quickly, they all have their own processes and workflows.

We are also talking about creatives. Do they even want to learn new tools and be told what to do, e.g. focus only on core franchises? Creatives usually want to try new ideas, they could lose many great devs by trying to over manage here.

Fingers crossed it pans out, but I think the odds are against them.

Xbox are being very open right now. Can you point to even ONE time they have said Game Pass is the problem? Hint: They haven't.

In fact Windows Central released a report from Microsoft saying Game Pass was propping up the failing parts of Xbox.

When you consider that Xbox Game Pass has been subsidizing departments that haven't been able to deliver fully yet

What went wrong was buying FAR too many studios, too many staff when they couldn't feed all those mouths and also turn a profit. ABK in particular being a disaster adding around 12,500 more jobs. Zenimax around 2,500 before that. They gambled on massive growth from acquisitions that never came, as Asha said in her statement. They then added CoD into Game Pass and raised Game Pass prices killing all the growth they had seen. Before then Xbox was making reasonable profits.

I realise you WANT Game Pass to be the bad guy here but can you point to any actual evidence or statements from Microsoft that back up your claim? I'll wait.

@NeoRatt I agree with you that the engine needs to fit the game, though Unreal is completely modular and you can use whatever parts you want or rebuild individual modules, or augment them, if they doesn’t fit your needs.

@betterthings Unreal licensing is 5% of a games revenue if you earn over $1 million USD. That may seem like a fair chunk but consider not just the cost to maintain your own engine, but also to re-train all your staff to use it including constantly with new hires. It adds up fast, slows development and may limit staff that want to work with new tools. I think you can offset that quickly. 5% is actually very reasonable when all costs are considered imo, it’s one reason it’s so popular.

I’m not against them pushing idTech further just showing there are some cons as well as pros, highlighting what occurred in the past with their proprietary engines and why they chose to switch to Unreal.

It will be interesting to see what they do.

I love how comparatively basic his set-up is for a guy who reportedly earns over $1.1 million a week in salary and endorsements. No garish RGB, no gaming chairs and other BS, just a simple sofa in an attic with some screens attached round a table for LAN parties.

Fingers crossed for Arkane. I hope that isn't a grim headline for another day.

This does actually make sense to me. When 343 - now Halo Studios - did their debrief about why Halo Infinite was such a business disaster - over budget, over time etc. their #1 conclusion was because they had to hire so many new people and train them in their custom Slipspace Engine.

The veteran staff were then busy trying to get new hires up to speed with the engine and weren't able to focus on the actual work. It wasn't helped that the studio had such poor staff retention that they were constantly having to retrain new staff to do this over and over and again. That's ultimately a key reason why Halo Infinite was late, over budget, and incomplete at launch.

Using idTech would just be the same issue. It doesn't matter how good the engine is if new hires can't use it. It takes months to learn new tools properly, and years to master them.

Incidentally this was exactly the same diagnosis CDPR made with Cyberpunk 2077, why it took several years longer to make than planned, why it was over budget and unfinished. Hence they came to the same conclusion with Unreal and ditched the powerful but proprietary RedEngine despite that being a longer term success.

Also tagged: @NeoRatt

Yes. It's a HUGE undertaking. But software developers have to do this from time to time just to get away from dealing with inefficient spaghetti code, and outdated engine design structures. It's just not optimal to keep refactoring old engines that are built on ancient paradigms.

Creation Engine was built on Gamebryo which is 30 years old. The ideas used to build it are completely outdated. Modders have been reporting all the issues with it for decades, things like tying the games physics / game speed to framerate; saves becoming bloated and causing crashing the longer you play; object loading zones rather than modern streaming tech; weak AI; systems that are all tied together and not modular meaning it's hard to replace or update one thing without causing problems elsewhere; poor error handling leading to crashes; and much more. You simply wouldn't build an engine like this in 2026. Hell you wouldn't build one like it in 2016!

I have no disillusions about what a mammoth job it would be to change engine. All their tools, their workflows and everything would have to change. It would take time and money. But again in the long run it should be worth that investment and should be seen as an opportunity. Won't happen sadly.

@slider271 TOTALLY agree. The number is unreasonable and a massive reach... but you have to try and sell something positive to investors from this... right?

But for us Xbox gamers this sucks as it signals intent to invest in the type of gaming we don't want.

@Juanalf Because she's talking about Candy Crush which get hundreds of millions of players a month. So expect more of that.

@NeoRatt idTech is a marvel, keep at it.

But while Creation Engine has a few benefits it also a LOT of cons. We still see the same Bethesda bugs we got in Morrowind and Oblivion, broken quests, janky ai, and more, it's awful, but hard to change without a lot of time and money.

@Mr-Cage Their staff would have to be retrained to use Unreal, they are all used to Creation Engine, the tools they use and workflows are all scoped around Creation Engine, it isn't so simple just to change engine.

Then there's the fans and modders who are all used to Creation Engine tools and scripting.

Look, I get it, personally I would LOVE them to start afresh with a new engine without all the Bethesda bugs, but this announcement suggests the opposite to me sadly.

Bold goals, and I wish her well, but we will have to wait and see. Odds are against her.

@fatpunkslim 3 layers of management would Asha -> Matt Booty -> Studio Head -> Staff. What about Creative Directors, individual section directors, section leads and more. Yes 14 is too many but 3-5 isn't enough when you have thousands and thousands of staff. I previously ran a company of 50 people and we had about around 4-5 layers depending on the task.

I suspect in reality the 14 isn't common, likely just a way to dress it up to make the 3,200 layoffs seem more palatable.

They are trying to save money AND speed up development, that all screams more Creation Engine to me sadly. New engine, new tools, new workflows take time and money.

3,200 Christ almighty that’s worse than I feared - and that’s on top of the 5,000 they’ve already laid off since 2022. I suppose the only slight silver lining is at least for now they apparently aren’t shuttering the studios… but only time will tell.

Wishing all involved the best of luck.

Bloodbath was right.

@TheFakulty Don't get confused between the number of games purchased digitally and the number of users that purchase physical media sometimes. 85% of games may have been sold digitally last quarter on PS5 but reportedly 83% of users have a PS5 with a disc drive in the USA. Most users probably buy a disc from time to time, just most purchases are digital. They aren't the same thing.

It was the Xbox 360 by far. But I have slowly sold my discs and digitised most of my collection in sales. The only discs I still have are for games that have been delisted like The Orange Box.

As much as I am pro-physical media in general the reality is I just don't buy discs on Xbox Series X. In fact the only Xbox disc I have bought this gen was Anthem, for the grand sum of £1 from CEX, to play it before it was delisted. (Was much better than I was expecting)

The biggest issue with me is backwards compatibility. How can you say you value backwards compatibility all the way back to Xbox and not allow discs?

Obviously if they had a disc to digital exchange, as has been suggested, that would alleviate some of that, but it needs to just work.

It wouldn't surprise me if they don't have any next gen games on disc as Xbox are moving towards being a PC-Console hybrid and PC is already all digital. Even if I'd prefer not to kill discs.

Final Fantasy VI pixel remaster was wonderful. The boosts massively improved replaying the game, could finish it in about 15 hours.

I want to play Rain world. But bit busy this month. Hopefully that stays

@oopsiezz That works out at around £242. EDIT: just saw you're based in Canada, not sure what the Rewards exchange rate is there.

I've had around 650,000 lifetime points (and currently 54,000) almost all spent extending Game Pass Ultimate.

It's a lot worse than it once was. But I still earn around 8-10k a month by not doing too much. That equates to around £6 - £8 a month which isn't too bad - I can pay for around 4 months of Game Pass Ultimate a year at this rate.

I haven't figured out whether the latest major change to rewards as a good or a bad thing for me, but it's far more reliant on streaks to maximise the rewards.

At this point just buy a HOTAS

@CallMeDuraSouka LMAO! Sixteen times the... it just works.

Love to see it!

Come on man... it really shouldn't be this hard, it should just work.

On the one hand this all makes good business sense, Microsoft need to better manage most of these studios and improve output.

On the other I worry about how many studios and devs will be cut loose due to their own mismanagement, they should have been better at evaluating them all far sooner then perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation needing a whole RESET. Sad to see.

@AgentCooper appreciated mate. Just started.

@ElectricWizard OK but then that’s another reason to go digital.