Just a few months after Microsoft Gaming got its new CEO in Asha Sharma, it looks like the company has plans to cut down on the workforce in its gaming division. According to a post on anonymous forums for professionals, Blind, the company is getting ready to announce lay-offs that will impact 15 percent of its workforce across its gaming division. The post comes from an employee claiming to be part of the Activision Blizzard team, who also mentioned “5/6”, which implies that the announcement will be made either on May 6th or June 5th, depending on the date standards used.
While far from an official confirmation, the post comes just a month after Microsoft had announced a hiring freeze across its cloud and sales groups. As one Amazon employee has noted in the comments of the Blind post, hiring freezes are typically put into place when a company is getting ready to announce major layoffs. The employee noted that Amazon did a similar thing back in January, and said that, “The writing is on the wall. It’s up to you to believe it or not.”
Sharma had taken over her current role from former CEO of Microsoft Phil Spencer back in February. At the time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had seemingly thanked Spencer for his work in the division and “extraordinary leadership and partnership” over the 38 years he worked at the company.
“Last fall, I shared with Satya that I was thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life,” said Spencer, according to the report. “From that moment, we aligned on approaching this transition with intention, ensuring stability, and strengthening the foundation we’ve built. Xbox has always been more than a business. It’s a vibrant community of players, creators, and teams who care deeply about what we build and how we build it. And it deserves a thoughtful, deliberate plan for the road ahead.”
Spencer’s departure was followed by that of Xbox president Sarah Bond. In a statement, she spoke about being proud of her achievements at the company, and noted that it was time for her to “take my next step, both personally and professionally.”
Another report had indicated that Bond’s departure came in light of her facing scrutiny over the “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign that she had championed, and its eventual failure. While the campaign was focused on Microsoft convincing gamers that just about any machine can be used to play games through services like Game Pass and Cloud Gaming, it never really caught on. The report indicated that the marketing campaign even “offended many employees internally,” with some noting that Bond was difficult to work with.
In the meantime, rumors have indicated that among Sharma’s first moves as CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be to introduce a new subscription tier of Game Pass that offers only titles released by first-party developers under the Xbox Game Studios banner. There have also been reports of a potential subscription bundle being in the works alongside streaming giant Netflix.
