2024 will forever be known as the year of record games industry layoffs and studio closures, but I’d argue it will be just as remembered as the year Xbox lost the plot. Every other month, Microsoft’s gaming division has what ranges from avoidable PR scandal to full-on doom-and-gloom meltdown.
We’re not even halfway through the year yet, and Xbox has already had to assuage fears it’s abandoning the console market entirely, and hand-wring about the apparent survival necessity behind its decision to publish some of its games on rival platforms. A couple of weeks prior, the company let go of 1,900 people from its gaming division, after promising it won’t do that when it was trying to convince regulators that it would make the perfect steward of Activision Blizzard. As recently as this week, Microsoft’s ruthless campaign of shortsighted cost-cutting continued with the closure of four studios, including some that are responsible for some of its most unique and well-beloved games, just as it continues its hollow calls for more games of this type to be made.
Looming over all that is the shadow of Game Pass, the service that Microsoft spent years building, and investing millions of dollars into to bolster its content offering – including the $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition.
About Author
