Turmoil at Xbox. Luckily (?) no mention of MSFS.

[DennyA]

(Posted this on the official forum; we'll see if it survives there. But it's of interest here too, so reposting.)

More layoffs, studio closures, and consolidation at Xbox announced. Halo Studios is apparently being reduced to a small support group while Activision takes over the franchise. Obsidian becomes part of Bethesda. A few hundred more Microsoft folks sent packing. And more.

Continuing Our Reset

This message was just sent to Team XBOX employees globally. Team, I’m writing to share several updates as part of the XBOX reset outlined earlier this year. First, we are eliminating 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer. The...

news.xbox.com

I read through the release and was happy *not* to see MSFS mentioned. Fingers crossed that the title is doing well enough, and Marketplace is generating enough income for the team, that it's safe.

But it's rough times for Xbox. Lots of "finding efficiencies" and "capital expense reductions," which are biz-speak for killing projects and laying people off.

The lack of mention of MSFS is (I hope) good news. Hopefully that means any cuts there were likely not significant enough to warrant inclusion in Matt Booty's letter. But I'd be very surprised if the team isn't working with less funding for Asobo and fewer resources than this time a couple of years ago.

So maybe something to keep in mind if your favorite feature or fix hasn't been addressed yet. Given how many of the people I knew at Xbox have been sent packing over the past couple of years, my biggest desire for the franchise is that we'll see continued growth and support for the sim, and eventually FS2028/2029 or whatever. I *want* better ATC and non-terrible autogen buildings, sure, but more than that I just want the platform's development to be sustained.

 

[azflyboy]

My assumption is that MSFS wasn't mentioned simply because Asobo isn't owned by Microsoft, so MS can't spin off or shut the studio down, which means cost savings from killing off MSFS wouldn't be close to what they're getting from cutting all the in-house jobs.

The Xbox division has been a bit of a dumpster fire for the last few years, since MS massively overspent on acquiring new studios, then weren't sure what to do with them, all while not being sure what "Xbox" was supposed to be, so it's probably good for Asobo that they're independent and have the Marketplace (and Xbox/PS5 releases) generating revenue beyond just the base game selling.

 

[DennyA]

Yeah, but they can save a buttload of cash by not renewing Asobo’s contract. And there’s a decent size team of Microsoft FTEs at Redmond Town Center supporting the non-coding parts. Sure, it’s not a saving like their “merging” of Obsidian with Bethesda, etc. but if the suits keep slicing, it could be a target.