Microsoft lays off 650 more in gaming

The current round of layoffs will mostly affect corporate and supporting staff, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said.

Microsoft is laying off a further 650 employees from its gaming division, according to a memo sent by Phil Spencer yesterday (12 September). This follows several previous rounds of layoffs to affect the tech giant.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Spencer said the job cuts will mostly affect corporate and supporting staff in the division.

“As part of aligning our post-acquisition team structure and managing our business, we have made the decision to eliminate approximately 650 roles across Microsoft Gaming – mostly corporate and supporting functions – to organise our business for long-term success,” said Spencer.

Spencer said that no games or devices will be cancelled because of these cuts and no studios are being closed as part of these layoffs. However, he said there would be “some impacts to other teams as they adapt to shifting priorities and manage the lifecycle and performance of games”.

SiliconRepublic.com reached out to Microsoft Ireland for comment.

Gaming industry suffers layoffs

Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in a $68.7bn deal last October. The acquisition followed a lengthy investigation by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to decide whether the deal between these two major gaming companies would harm competition in the sector. After the tech giant made some concessions to the authority, the CMA found that the new deal will stop Microsoft from “locking up” competition in cloud gaming and preserve competitive prices and services for UK cloud gamers.

Following the acquisition, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees at Blizzard and Xbox and Blizzard’s president resigned. At the time, Spencer said the layoffs came as a result of “aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business”. In May, it was revealed that the company is working on further cost-cutting efforts in its gaming division.

Elsewhere, the gaming industry has seen big layoffs.

In February, Sony Interactive Entertainment laid off roughly 900 staff from its global PlayStation workforce. And in April, Take-Two Interactive Software, the Rockstar Games parent company, revealed plans to fire around 5pc of its workforce and scrap several titles in development.

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