The layoffs at Microsoft reportedly extend to various developers in its gaming division, including Bethesda Game Studios and 343 Industries, as per Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. These include employees who had been at Xbox “for more than a decade.” Kotaku reported that The Coalition saw several layoffs as well.

While CEO Satya Nadella says the company will “continue to hire in key strategic areas” and spoke about using artificial intelligence to build a “new computer platform,” some engineering divisions and the HoloLens team have also seen layoffs. The Verge’s Tom Warren reported on Twitter that marketing and Microsoft Edge teams also saw employees fired.

Nadella also spoke of consumers optimizing their digital spending to “do more with less.” “We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one,” Nadella wrote.

In the meantime, it’s worth remembering that Microsoft purchased Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion last year. It’s held up by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority while the United States Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit (with no plans to settle).

Microsoft's layoffs today have affected employees in the following divisions:

• HoloLens
• Microsoft Edge
• marketing
• 343 Industries
• Bethesdahttps://t.co/aVeUflxFqt

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) January 18, 2023

Sony’s investment in VR technology this generation has been laudable, and it’s likely that they’ll be looking to take that even further with the PS5, while recent reports have suggested that Nintendo, too, could be looking to bring VR to the Switch eventually. Microsoft, however, have been sitting out the VR race as the one notable absentee, and based on their practices and their plans, it seems like VR might not be something they’ll look to focus on anytime soon.

As per Pablo Lafora, game designer at Tessera Studios, developers of the PSVR horror title Intruders: Hide and Seek, it’s likely that Microsoft will be sitting out VR next generation as well, with maybe HoloLens 2 functionality – potentially – figuring in somewhere for the Xbox Scarlet (or whatever Microsoft chooses to call the next Xbox).

“No matter how much I ask, I never get any news on Microsoft VR,” Lafora told GamingBolt in an exclusive interview. “Just some rumors about HoloLens 2. It seems like they don’t have much interest in VR. On one hand, it looks like right now they won’t include VR features on their next console. On the other hand… that sounds really risky. Maybe the next Xbox will be HoloLens 2 compatible? It might be, but we don’t think the console/marketing will make HoloLens the core of it all.”

Though Microsoft’s focus on services such as Game Pass and xCloud has been clear to see already, and undoubtedly will be even more at the forefront of their strategy in the coming years, the one major thing they have been noticeable silent on is VR. While that doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of them doing something in that space down the line, their silence on the front has certainly not gone unnoticed.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt, our full interview with Lafora will be going live soon.

Microsoft’s HoloLens- and indeed, augmented reality as a whole- may not be ready for prime time yet as far as gaming goes, but some games can still make some very cool use of it. Minecraft of course is one very obvious example, and we have seen that before. But earlier today, World of Tanks developer Wargaming showed a little demo of World of Tanks running in mixed reality on Microsoft’s AR headset.

There is a video of this demonstration- sadly, most of the magic will be lost for us, since there is no real way to film mixed reality. That said, we can still get at least some idea of what it was like. You can check out the video for yourself below.

HoloLens isn’t available to the consumer market yet- but Microsoft does have its mixed reality and virtual reality initiatives, which we should start seeing more of in the coming months. World of Tanks, meanwhile, is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Minecraft will be launching on Nintendo Switch come May- and Microsoft kindly shared more details about what people can expect in the newest version of the game. It sounds like unlike the Wii U version, which seemed to be a pretty minimal port, ignoring most of the system’s features, the Switch version will actually leverage the system it is on to some degree.

First- the Switch version’s world sizes will be far beyond the world sizes in the PS Vita, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U versions of the game. On those platforms, the world’s size was capped at 864×864, while the Switch version goes as high as 3072×3072. This is also smaller than the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, but it is over 13 times as large as the other versions, and it runs at a blistering 60fps- for comparison, the Vita version was sub 30fps.

That’s not all- the Switch version of the game will also support import of worlds made in the Wii U version of the game, although that is a feature that won’t be available right away at launch. At launch the Switch version will be equivalent to the January build of Minecraft– Mojang hopes to get it on par with all the other versions of the game shortly afterwards.

Minecraft on Nintendo Switch will launch in May exclusively on the Nintendo eShop.

[NeoGAF]

VR is a nascent industry- and it is already one that is currently having issues finding a foothold, what with none of the existing major VR product launches having performed quite as well as one would have hoped for. So it’s good to see that a spirit of collaboration exists between the major players in the VR industry.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Microsoft’s Head of Xbox Phil Spencer talked about how open both Sony and Microsoft have been with the development of their VR technologies and standards, calling Sony’s VR team ‘great.’

“The Sony guys have been great,” he said, “they’ve had our teams down, we’ve had them up to look at HoloLens and stuff that’s been going on. Obviously Valve’s about a stone’s throw from here. So the VR community itself is actually very collaborative because I think everybody realizes how early we are in the evolution of what this thing is about.”

Hopefully, that’s how it turns out in the end- VR’s only shot at success is in being an open ecosystem that creators and consumers can tinker with alike. Having collaboration between the major players would certainly be one way of accomplishing that goal.

As more and more virtual reality devices hit the gaming market, there is one that is noticeably absent. The Microsoft Hololens has not yet been released, but Xbox One chief Phil Spencer says the device’s development is moving right along.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, Spencer talked about how this particular device isn’t specifically geared towards gaming, but will definitely have a presence in gaming when it arrives. “There is a lot of talks in the back concerning playing games in MR! VR does allow you to enter a virtual world but only within a certain space, MR however further establishes this by blurring the lines between Reality and the virtual world. It sounds scary but it just shows how much can be created and enjoyed.”

Spencer couldn’t add a great deal of specifics about the device and how it will be incorporated into gaming, but he did say the development is, “going swimmingly at this current stage!”

In October this year, Sony plans to launch the PlayStation VR, a new virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4 that is being billed as an all new platform by Sony. While VR’s ultimate potential remains to be seen in terms of commercial performance, at the very least, it seems like Sony has something coming to refresh the PlayStation 4 line, and expand interest in their flagship console. Essentially, they have an incoming new hardware launch, which is just about the only thing that can effectively counter another hardware launch.

Which raises the question of exactly how Microsoft plans to react to Nintendo’s introduction of the NX and Sony’s PlayStation VR?

"With the NX launch, it seems like the console market is going to get a good, proper, and arguably needed shake up this year."

At this point  Microsoft don’t seem to have any plans in place to counter the NX at all. The HoloLens, Microsoft’s excellent seeming augmented reality headset, could have been a great way to refresh interest in the Xbox One platform, and counter interest in the NX and especially the PlayStation VR- it would also have been a major hardware launch for them, which would have brought in some numbers and mainstream attention, too. However, while HoloLens is launching for developers soon, the consumer launch of the headset seems to be suspended indefinitely– Microsoft’s stated goal is to avoid having the kind of scarcity of compelling software for the HoloLens that was ultimately the Kinect’s undoing on the Xbox 360.

So there is nothing on the hardware front to keep the attention on Xbox- but this is not exactly a new situation for Microsoft. In 2006, the Xbox 360 was almost a year old, and faced the prospect of fighting off the impending launches of not one, but two threatening competitors in the guise of the PlayStation 3 and the Wii. And the Xbox 360 managed to hold its own, ultimately selling more than either of the competing consoles in that year, thanks to a great lineup of killer games that made the Xbox 360 the must own machine for gamers, and ensured that the console was always in the conversation- games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Gears of War.

"This is not exactly a new situation for Microsoft."

Surely if the Xbox One has a similar spate of great compelling exclusives planned, it should be able to hold off the assault of the NX and the PSVR too, right? The problem, though, is, that the Xbox One’s exclusive game lineup this year is definitely not the kind that can keep buzz for the system high in the face of two new platform launches. Don’t get me wrong – games like ReCore, Sea of Thieves, Quantum Break, Crackdown 3, and Gears of War 4 all look great, and I am sure they will be neat additions to the Xbox One library – the trouble is that all of those games are either shared with PC, or rumored to have PC versions in the pipeline. The other problem is, none of them can generate the kind of buzz that would be needed to counter the launch of two new platforms. A new platform launch is a momentous occasion, and while it is possible for a game (or two) to be able to take attention away from that, the game in question needs to be massive, essentially penetrating social pop culture consciousness, for it to be able to do so. In 2001, the PlayStation 2 got three such games to counter the launches of the Xbox and Gamecube, in the form of Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and most importantly, Grand Theft Auto III– these games were phenomenal, and had everyone talking about them. They were also all playable only on the PS2, at least at the time. The Xbox 360 repeated the feat against the Wii and PS3 with Oblivion and Gears of War.

And that’s the problem- while I have no doubt that Microsoft’s games for the Xbox will be great, they won’t go viral, so to speak. They all suffer from problems on diametric ends of the scale, with all of them either being sequels that are too safe, to long running franchises that won’t exactly attract new fans at this point, or, if they are new, looking far too niche to capture popular imagination.

Couple this with the fact that the PlayStation VR and the Nintendo NX are both widely expected to introduce new paradigms to video games- PSVR in the form of VR gaming, naturally, while the NX is expected to, at worst, be a console with full third party support and Nintendo’s excellent first party support, and at best, a console that changes the paradigm completely again- much like the NES, N64, and Wii did. The danger to the Xbox One becomes clearer- the console, long since having taken a beating in terms of public perception due to its early PR blunders, as well as the stigma of being the weaker console,runs the very real risk of being ignored, with attention instead shifting to the NX and the PSVR- essentially, the exact same thing that happened to Nintendo and the Wii U in 2013, just a year after the console had initially launched.

"I want to hope that it will be announced this E3- an Xbox One Elite launch for this holiday season will certainly end up giving Microsoft some ammunition to keep the Xbox One competitive as it prepares to fend off the assault of not one, but two new combatants into the ring."

So yes, Microsoft needs to have a strategy in place to counter the NX and the PSVR. Xbox fans will probably want to think that neither are going to be big enough threats, and/or that the Xbox One will do fine even if the PSVR and the NX take off, but they would be lying to themselves- facts and numbers do not lie, and Xbox One sales are on a sharp trajectory downwards. Sales for the machine have stalled in all territories except the UK and US, and even there, the Xbox One sees month on month drops, and is consistently outsold by the PlayStation 4. What the system needs right now is more interest, as opposed to it losing mindshare completely, because the public eye is trained on new entrants.

So yes- the PSVR seems to be inoculating the PS4 against the NX launch, and the NX itself should be fine, because it’s a new hardware launch (and I want to point out, even if the NX does falter in the long run, it poses a very real immediate short term threat, by being a new hardware launch- even the Wii U and PlayStation Vita had extremely successful launches). There seems to be no such strategy in place for the Xbox One. Phil Spencer has discussed the possibility of introducing an upgraded Xbox One console some time, an Xbox one Elite so to speak, not unlike the rumored PS4.5 – which, incidentally, is a very sensible long term strategy, in my opinion – but we don’t know what the timeframe for that is, and when it will even be announced. I want to hope that it will be announced this E3- an Xbox One Elite launch for this holiday season will certainly end up giving Microsoft some ammunition to keep the Xbox One competitive as it prepares to fend off the assault of not one, but two new combatants into the ring. Because if not, then Microsoft faces the very real risk of completely diminished public interest in their console, much like what happened to the Sega Dreamcast, and Nintendo’s Wii U, before it.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Phil Spencer is known for being a class act- the man has a passion for games and gaming, which comes through. And even though he heads up the Xbox brand, he still has had no problems ever giving credit to others, including the competition, where it has been due.

So it comes as no surprise to hear him be a good sport again, this time related to the upcoming PlayStation VR by Sony. Although Spencer is considerably tempered in his expectations from the product, as well as how Sony seem to be going about it in general, he does wish Sony the very best of luck with the headset.

“Our bet on VR right now on an open platform for innovation [like Windows 10] is the best place for something that is this early in its incubation,” Spencer said in an interview with Gamespot. “You can say Minecraft will be the killer app, but nobody’s bought a copy of Minecraft for VR.”

Given this preference for open platforms, Spencer is not entirely sold on the concept of a closed VR ecosystem.

“I think VR is still right at the beginning. Taking that to a closed ecosystem today, I think to me is just too early,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t belong in console…I hope Sony has success with what they’re trying to do because I think it’s good for our industry as innovations like VR take off. But for me, and where we are with Xbox, my bet is putting the development tools in the hands of literally millions of people who can go on Windows and start building their own VR experiences is likely to lead to faster content innovation than a closed ecosystem would.

“So we’re supporting Valve, we’re supporting Oculus, we want to make sure Windows 10 is a great place for those developers that want to build those ideas for what might make the killer app for VR.”

While Microsoft so far does not have a VR product of its own, it does have the AR powered HoloLens, which launches at the end of March for developers, for a price of $3,000. Sony’s PlayStation VR, meanwhile, is the last major VR product launch remaining for this year- and no confirmation of either price or launch dates has been made yet.

Last week, Microsoft held a conference for upcoming Xbox One and Windows 10 games- but they also spent some time discussing the upcoming HoloLens, which goes on sale for developers at the end of March. The event was supposed to be embargoed until March- but it appears as though several outlets have broken the embargo, and begun reporting on what Microsoft showed off early.

For instance, Fortune posted an article today (since taken down, but preserved for posterity by Reddit) discussing the HoloLens, and the games it would launch with- and it seems as though Microsoft has some truly great ideas here. When the $3,000 HoloLens development hardware launches, three games will be available for it- Fragments, which sees the player play the role of an investigator, and analyze evidence in your surroundings in the real world (“Fragments blends the line between the digital world and the real world more than any other experience we built. When your living room has been used as the set for a story, it generates memories for you of what digitally happened in your space like it was real. It is an experience that bridges the uncanny valley of your mind and delivers a new form of storytelling like never before,” said Kudo Tsunoda, Microsoft corporate vice president); RoboRaid, which is a first person shooter, somewhat like the Face Raiders application that comes built into all Nintendo 3DS systems, except with a greater emphasis on sound; and finally, the return of a mascot fans have long clamored for in Young Conker.

“It is amazing how different the play experience feels based on playing the game in your living room versus your kitchen or your bedroom. Even starting the game from a different position in a single room creates an entirely new gameplay dynamic,” Tsunoda said about this game.

Of course, why Conker was used to headline HoloLens, instead of getting a new traditional game, remains unknown, but hey, at the very least, Microsoft haven’t forgotten about him.

That probably means something… right?

Microsoft may not be planning on sharing the AR love with consumers any time soon, but they’re soldiering ahead with their plans for the developer version of their revolutionary new AR headset, Microsoft HoloLens, anyway. Today, they announced that developer applicants will start receiving invitations to pre-order the developer edition of HoloLens- which will then ship out starting March 30.

Early developer response to the device has apparently been staggeringly enthusiastic. “Thousands of developers have experienced HoloLens first hand and have contributed ideas to the ecosystem through programs like “Share Your Idea”. Our developer roadshows were fully booked across all eleven cities within the first 90 minutes of being made available,” Microsoft said.

“The enthusiasm we are seeing is exciting! We have introduced new partners likeVolvo Cars, Autodesk Fusion 360 and have continued to make progress in our partnerships with Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic,Trimble, and NASA. I am happy to report NASA is mission operational with the Mars Onsite project we announced jointly on January 21^st of last year, using HoloLens to help explore the surface of Mars. HoloLens is also very proudly in-use by astronauts in space after NASA successfully delivered HoloLens to the International Space Station to aid in its Project Sidekick work.”

Microsoft also shared some details on the HoloLens- it will be an entirely independent and untethered computer, with on board multiple environment understanding sensors. It’s powered by a custom-built Microsoft Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) and an Intel 32-bit architecture. The HPU is apparently custom silicon that will allow HoloLens to understand gestures and gaze while mapping the environment in real time. Other components, such as high end optical technology, and support for Bluetooth, were also detailed.

Now we just hope that Microsoft change their mind about releasing this to customers sooner rather than later…