Well, there you go. Jason Schreier reported yesterday that XBox is going to cut 3200 jobs and either sell or divest themselves of 5 studios.
An internal email from Asha Sharma, the current CEO of XBox, outlined everything. She also said that she wants 1 billion players per day for XBox overall (this starts at the 4:58 mark in the video above). She also mentions that they want to focus their investments in XBox, which pretty much means for these bigger studios to shed projects that won't generate as much profit and eyeballs on screens.
From what it sounds, XBox Game Studios and Zenimax will be hit hard by layoffs, and Activision Blizzard King less so but still impacted. The overall number of jobs being lost is 3200, but only 1600 right now. That translates into waves of layoffs going forward, including divestiture/sale from the studios already identified. (Apparently Arkane Studios is also targeted, but Microsoft has begun the divestiture process with the French Work Council, as they can't summarily be canned without due process.)
What does that mean for those who love the two big MMOs that these studios manage, Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft? Probably job cuts and scaling back of the staffing for both teams.
For all those expecting Classic Plus, here's hoping that these cuts don't kill it off.
I would expect, however, far more monetization of both properties to try to boost profits. So, if you've been dismayed at some of Cash Shop options from World of Warcraft, hold onto your hat. You ain't seen nothing yet.
There will be a lot more integration of these various game studios with the Microsoft parent organization, so that Zenimax or Activision/Blizzard or King (it's marked separately from A-B in the email) will lose a lot of their independence and corporate culture. Will that impact the end product? Yes, it will; you don't change corporate culture without changing the product itself. Hell, this happens all the time in Corporate America: the old enshittification process writ large. The back office jobs, or those not labelled "critical" to a game studio are about to get cut.
Let's hope that these studios aren't saddled with having to use a single engine for all of their development in the same way that Bioware got trapped by EA into using Frostbite for their game engine for the past several games, despite it being NOT built for RPGs or ARPGs at all.
I noticed that Jason didn't mention Obsidian with the letter, but I have to think that it won't have escaped unscathed. Helluva time for Tim Cain to move back to California to rejoin Obsidian after being in semi-retirement.
I am probably moving out of consoles with the next generation. Rumor has it that the PS6 will cost more than $1000. And of course it will be entirely unable to play disks, so my collection of PS4 and 5 games may as well be frisbees as far as it's concerned.
ReplyDeleteThe only advantage that consoles have over PC as gaming devices is (a) better value (b) supported by both local retailers and a large used gaming market and (c) exclusives.
People argue about A, but a PS5 that I paid $500 for runs games that you would need a graphics card that costs twice that (let alone a PC to put it in) really well. People that only game on a PC really underestimate how much juice developers can get out of a fixed platform with a large installed based if they want too. You have always needed multiples of the hardware specs a console has to get equivalent performance from a PC. In terms of value, it's never really been close, unless total library size is all you care about.
Regardless, I don't think exclusives is going to be nearly enough once Sony nixes A and B. The only reason I haven't seriously considered a Steam Machine is that it's too expensive . . .
once Sony and Microsoft . .
DeleteHonestly, I think that Sony is fine with fewer console sales if they kept all the profit from games sales to themselves by digital distribution rather that physical disc sales.
DeleteI proposed this on Wilhelm's post on the job cuts topic, and I have to mention it here because it does kind of make sense: one way for Microsoft to hit their insane 1 billion user per day comment is to simply purchase Sony outright and pull it all in-house. It won't let them meet their 30% profit target, but it will hit that 1 billion mark.