Today, Xbox was gutted. About 1600 people are being shown the door right now, with another 1600 to be affected in the coming year. Everybody knew this was in the works and has been bracing for it. But because Double Fine and Compulsion are being given independence and Undead Labs and Ninja Theory are being sold off (with the fate of Arkane Lyon still up in the air due to labor laws in France), some people are patting Xbox on the back. I have seen apologia for this move and praise for CEO Asha Sharma specifically for her candor. Fuck ‘em–you don’t need to hand it to these people.
Riley MacLeod
Sharma’s “Resetting Xbox” memo is a masterclass in annoying and meaningless drivel. It speaks authoritatively in the first person as though Sharma has been there for longer than a handful of months, and the prose is muddy, tasteless, and confused. At one point Sharma ends one paragraph discussing Xbox’s ballooning portfolio and losing 64 cents for every dollar invested with “…we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision.” OK, I am sure that will help all the people out of a job right now.
She coyly returns again and again to the metaphor of “resetting” Xbox, a gaming metaphor I am sure she is smugly satisfied with because she uses it six times in what is ultimately a quite short missive. She talks broadly about the general profitability of Xbox while also stating that “the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history.” Hey Asha, quick question: could you elaborate on what is contributing to the hardware crisis? Could it perhaps be the company that you work for?
Chris Person
The entire thing is full of the typical “move fast and break things” pablum you see in people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about but pretend like they do. At one point in the memo, Sharma states, “We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes” rather than what she sees as the company’s previous redundant layers of management. These are not the utterances of a person; these are false words delivered in a pitch only millionaires and billionaires understand. These are the words of a pain sponge whose primary interest in games extends to less than a year and whose main leadership experience is with Instacart and Meta. And while laying the blame largely on bureaucracy is a nice line–people hate red tape–I don’t think 1600 bumbling middle managers are losing their jobs today. It’s people who make games like The Elder Scrolls Online and Doom, or the people responsible for accessibility (a hallmark of Xbox).
Gita Jackson
The entire memo is full of such wonderful brain gems such as “We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger” and “It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio.” At one point Sharma states, “I want XBOX to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect.” A BILLION PEOPLE A DAY, Asha? Creating and connecting, via Xbox? You just sent 1600 people into one of the worst job markets in history for the industry, and you’re talking about an install base of a billion, are you fucking high?
These are delusional, careless, and tedious people who will never suffer consequences like these, attempting to massage a bad message so they can get patted on the back for it. It speaks of austerity and profit margins with a ruthless, mercenary logic that they refuse to apply to the other, money-burning parts of the company. And while I do not doubt Xbox could have been run more efficiently, the problem isn’t Xbox; it’s Microsoft. Nobody has ever loved Microsoft; it has only been tolerated, and increasingly less so with its embrace of AI and enabling of genocide in Gaza. It is a B2B SaaS company wearing a person costume and demanding love like Scarlett Johansson in Under The Skin. This entire charade is all in the service of a scam, the livelihoods of countless people being thrown into a furnace so Satya Nadella can continue to dick around with Copilot, an AI product so bad that I have no evidence to suggest that anybody has used it on purpose including AI perverts.
You do not have to grant the upper management of Xbox plaudits for a kindly-worded bloodbath. They have done nothing for you and even less for the people who work, and worked, for them.
