Microsoft told its Xbox staff the truth in blunt terms: the business “is not healthy.” The fix? 3,200 job cuts, five studios out the door, two of them European.
Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma laid it out in an official memo on Monday. She called it the most significant restructure in the division’s history. Xbox will cut roughly 3,200 roles, about 20 per cent of its workforce, over the coming year. Around 1,600 go immediately. Five studios will leave Xbox altogether.
The European casualties
Two of the studios sit in Europe. Microsoft will sell Ninja Theory, the Cambridge maker of the Hellblade series, along with Undead Labs. Both keep building their current games, Senua and State of Decay 3. In France, Arkane Studios in Lyon now enters a formal consultation with its Works Council.
That process will run slower than the rest, Bloomberg reports, because French labour law is stricter. Compulsion Games and Double Fine return to their founders as independent studios, keeping their staff, catalogues and game rights.
