Microsoft Just Gutted Its Gaming Division — MASS Layoffs, Canceled Games, and Studio Shutdowns

0:00 from vacation. I don't really know what's going on in the world. Because I was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere to give you an idea. I was an hour and a half away from the closest AMC, so I could not go see the new F1 movie. And I was pretty sad about that here. But anyway, so I thought we would start off with a happy. Topic, you know, just getting back into the groove of things. It's been three weeks. You know, the world's on fire, I guess. So let's yeah, something that's not going to like make us all super depressed. So anyways, large scale layoffs have been happening across like the gaming division of Microsoft.

0:44 In total, Microsoft has laid off recently about 9000 employees. This also means the cancellation into high profile games that have been in development for a very long time. Rare's Everwind and the initiatives reboot of Perfect Dark. Alex, have you heard of these games? Were you waiting for these games? I was not particularly waiting for these games. Perfect Dark is a classic. series that they used to have. I was kind of looking forward to a reboot of it. I'd heard of it, but I wasn't like jumping over the world about it. I don't know. Rare is dead. Like, I hate to say it, but rare rare as a studio is is toast. Well, also, the initiative studio was shut down and this this studio was formed back in 2018 and they actually never released a video game. Other companies hit hard with the playoffs recently.

1:42 Blizzard, Call of Duty's developer Raven Software. They're currently working on Black Ops 7. Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 laid off close to 50 % of their employees. Elder Scrolls online developer Xenomax with a Z. Online Studios canceled and unannounced massively. Exciting multiplayer game supposedly. I don't know. They didn't announce it but Doom creator John Romero was working on a new first -person shooter game apparently for Microsoft which is lost funding Meaning we will probably never see it But yeah, everything that I just listed Has has been owned and operated by Microsoft so I asked this question to you Why is Microsoft buying like half of the gaming market just to kill anything or Are they even good at running gaming studios? What are your thoughts? I'm gonna start with your second question first and the answer is are they good at running game studios? No Case in point was bungee. Yeah Yeah, bungee three four three. I don't know how that whole back and forth with all those mother Anyway, no, they're not going to run in gaming studios. They're just not. And I don't know what's happening over at Xbox. I saw some of the strategy

3:15 when they were like, again, they were buying up Bethesda. They're buying up all this stuff like, OK, we're going to do this with Xbox and we're going on this live journey. And I, for a long time, was a proponent of Xbox Game Pass. OK, for a long time, I was a proponent of it. I thought it was a great deal. Um, I don't anymore. Um, I don't know what they're doing over at the Xbox division. Um, it, it, it boggles the mind. I don't know what the strategy is. There seems to me no rhyme or reason for it. Um, I, I, I really can't, I can't put it all together. Now it may have something to do with this. And I brought this article up on IGN and I thought about what we were going to do as a separate segment, but you know what? Now I think we're just Loop it in here. IGN. Oops. Hang on. Let me fix one thing real quick. IGN has basically said that Gen Z wants a. It's an article, basically, younger Americans are spending way less money on video games, 25 percent less on video games than this year than last year. Now. Without without.

4:31 I'm sorry Wall Street Journal, you don't understand why these kids are buying less games. You don't. It's not just economic woes, okay? Honestly, video games are one of the cheapest forms of entertainment, dollar to hour of entertainment, out there, right? You buy a $60 game, you can milk that mother for a lot of entertainment. That's not why. I'll tell you why. There's just not a lot of good stuff out there right now. The gaming industry is in kind of a drought Right like I what was the last game Jay that you were really and I mean super hype about Super hyped about or like super obsessed with Hyped about you're like man. I'm buying that day one. I want to take a day off work. I Let's go. I'm not waiting for it to go on steam sale I'm not waiting till somebody recommends it to me before I become obsessed with it after I start playing. No, this is this game is coming and I want to jump over the moon to play it right now. Cyberpunk. And let's see here, what year did Cyberpunk I I legit.

5:51 Built a gaming PC. Yeah, and and when did that game come out? I could tell you five years ago. Five years ago. Five fucking years ago. Some of the YouTube chats ask if there's if IGN other periodicals still relevant. Somewhat. I would say they're still somewhat relevant. I still get a lot of good rundown stuff from them, so I'll give IGN credit. I'll be honest. The hype's just not there right now. We occasionally get like a brief cultural moment like with Helldivers Yeah, right where everybody kind of jumps in Helldivers for a little while and then it goes away right, but honestly What's everybody excited about? See, I'm not I'm not entirely sure if that's it I think We are just like massively over stimulated Could be and I say that because I remember when I was younger playing console games. I mean, I would sit there and put in probably 100 hours for fucking games that. I might not even buy today, and I think there's just so much content 24 seven of new game, new game, new game.

7:18 This is on sale. This is on sale. This is on sale. Like I legit have like, you know, a steam library of games. 200 games, probably 50%. I've never played, um, completing a game is like impossible now. And I could say like, well, I'm a, I'm an adult now, right? Like I have a job, like I have responsibilities, but I don't think that's it. I think I go to work and I look at the thousand unread emails I have, and I'm in like five or six, like family group chats on social media. No offense, guys. um text chats insert whatever other social media bs by the time i get home like i kind of want to like unplug from the matrix for a little bit like it's just too much like everything is always new all the time right yeah absolutely and again i i think it's younger people are playing less games people our age are more picky about the games they play and the ones they invest time into I can tell you in the last year and a half, there's probably four games I've invested more than a few hours into. Right.

8:32 And it's it's it's hard to grab me these days again. So the sales numbers, I mean, again, 25 percent year over year drop in 18 to 29 year olds. Right. Which is a big part of their market. Right. Means I would not be shocked if. Microsoft and other gaming companies are having some really hard financial times right now. Right. So these kind of layoffs again, very, very sad, but not surprising to me at all. And again, I think that Microsoft specifically, when it comes to Xbox, they kind of lost their way. Right. Like they had some clear direction in the Xbox, the 360.

9:14 The Xbox one was a. Absolute misstep. It was an absolute misfire during that console generation. They knew it. They did it from the jump. They screwed it up at the gate. And honestly, I don't know if Xbox ever recovered from the absolute debacle that was the Xbox One's launch. Right? That thing went down in gaming history as one of the absolute worst console launches you could do. Right? Connect is necessary. You have to have it for the full experience for Xbox One. You can't sell Xbox One without Connect. A year later, yeah, we'll start selling Xbox One without Connect. We're sorry, right? You can't lend games anymore. Everything's DRM locked. And then PlayStation comes out with a commercial the next day. The next day at E3 showing full frickin' loanability of their games, right? Like they... They bungled that launch so much and again, I don't think they've ever really recovered not fully. You know. It sucks that all these people are losing their jobs, you know, 9000 people, but they've got to. They've got to find a way out of this.

10:38 Yeah. Jay's just over here, silent, shaking his head like I just I don't know. I think I think the whole system is broken. I think back in the day you had game developers that like legit were nerds that loved playing video games, that loved making video games that and I'm not saying that nowadays like, oh, nowadays the kids don't care. I'm not saying that. But now I've seen this like mindset of when you have a startup, your number one goal is to get big enough to be bought out.

11:22 Period. And that's well, we won't go down that road. Let's let's take I'm going to put a pin in that particular topic for just a second, because I may start a new topic on this. The crappy thing is, is that the system used to work really, really well. Right. Is that game developers would make games and then game publishers and gaming companies would pay them for the games that they made and then start over again. Right. And I think we see this again where corporate consolidation is just bad. Corporate consolidation is not a good thing. Right. And every time. Every time.

12:07 it happens everybody loses um somebody in the youtube chat is making a joke and it's a classic seattle joke and i'm gonna i'm gonna talk about this right so so back in the day seattle has always been a company town right it's always been a company town and back in the day there was a billboard when we thought boeing was going to blow up right and and lose uh leave town for good right and so consequently somebody put up this billboard with the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights so he's not always going to leave and Seattle was going to die right uh so somebody in the YouTube chat said well the last person leaving Redmond shut the server down um I don't think it's to that point Microsoft as a company is doing fine Okay. Microsoft's doing great. $245 billion in revenue last year, $109 billion in operating income, up 24%. Microsoft is doing fine. Corporate consolidation is bad because when people are managing individual department P &Ls, they're going to cut to make their bonus.

13:30 Right? That's how this shit works. Okay. Corporate consolidation is bad. Right? It just is. It always has been. Okay? It sucks. It really, really sucks. And what happens is people lose their jobs. It's bullshit. Anyway, that was a fun topic to open the evening with Jay. Yeah, I wanted something light, you know, something fun. Something like, you know, a fun topic. Yeah, just kind of bring everyone out of depression.