Mass layoffs at Xbox are only making it harder to meet Microsoft’s still-steep expectations amid management chaos, according to one of the id Software employees who escaped the studio’s own wave of redundancies.
Speaking with Aftermath, this anonymous id employee reportedly says “things are still very chaotic” as Xbox works to finish the “reset” plan that CEO Asha Sharma described as essential for the health of the business.
3,200 jobs will be eliminated for the sake of the plan, and after the latest cuts, Xbox creative lead Matt Booty estimates the company is 75% of the way through it. This has doomed countless Xbox devs to walk on eggshells until the other shoe eventually drops.
“While there has been an attempt to communicate to the studios, it is still entirely in bullshit corporate speak,” says the id employee. “I still don’t believe they have a clear vision for the future. The only concrete thing they have communicated is they want higher profits, and they want it now.”
Previously, it was reported that Microsoft’s notoriously high profit expectations had left Xbox with an ultimatum. Assessing the Xbox business, Sharma said in June that “our business today is not healthy” and spoke negatively of margins that were 3 to 10 times lower than “comparable platform and publishing businesses.”
It sounds like Microsoft is still teeing up moonshot margins. This id employee continues: “Aggressive goals are being set that would have been unrealistic even before the layoffs. … To say the workers within Xbox have a dim view of the future is putting it mildly. We keep thinking morale can’t sink lower but the obvious incompetence of Xbox management somehow keeps driving it down worse.”
Among many conflicts in Xbox’s plan, an understated one is the simple fact that laying off devs directly opposes the goal of releasing more and better games, something Microsoft has struggled to do for many years.
It’s not just that Xbox teams will be down talent and manpower – even the sterling Elder Scrolls team is bleeding invaluable seniority – or saddled with overseeing studios which they’ve been forced to absorb. Creatives rightly fearing for their jobs under notoriously closure-happy leadership will struggle to make good games simply because fear, doubt, confusion, and uncertainty are demonstrably terrible for morale, motivation, and mental health.
As late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in 2013: “If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.”