A new report has emerged which alleges that Xbox is planning what sound like sweeping layoffs across the company, shortly before the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year.
According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier (who, in turn, cites “people familiar with the plans who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic information”), the planned layoffs at Xbox are part of a “company-wide reorganization”.
Schreier’s report doesn’t estimate how many employees will lose their jobs at Xbox, but he does say the cuts will be “substantial” and that they’ll be made “across the entire [Xbox] group”, so it sounds like every department has a chance to be affected by the layoffs.
As Schreier points out, this will be the fourth time Microsoft has engaged in layoffs across an eighteen-month period. Most recently, the company let go around 3% of its total employees, with a Microsoft spokesperson then claiming the layoffs were to help the company achieve “success in a dynamic marketplace”.
Prior to that, another wave of layoffs took place at Microsoft in January. In both cases, Microsoft didn’t disclose exactly how many employees lost their jobs, although they did do their employees the courtesy of revealing this information for layoffs put into effect in September last year.
That’s all in addition to almost 2,000 layoffs from the Xbox gaming workforce in January last year. Of course, none of this stopped CEO Satya Nadella scoring an eye-watering payrise in October, but then again, t’was ever thus.
Microsoft hasn’t officially confirmed this latest round of Xbox layoffs yet, and it didn’t provide comment to Bloomberg either, so we don’t officially know these cuts are going ahead. It’s entirely possible Microsoft may never publicly announce the cuts, too.
These cuts come as part of a wider industry layoff wave that has seen companies both big and small affected, as well as plenty of project cancellations and studio closures to boot.
We’ll have to wait and see if Microsoft issues an official statement confirming Bloomberg’s reported layoffs. Stay tuned for more on this one.
