As part of the recent layoffs at Xbox affecting around 1,200 employees for now, with roughly 3,200 total layoffs planned for the rest of the fiscal year, CEO Asha Sharma has also revealed plans for the future of the division. These plans include resetting the platform as a whole and resetting how the Xbox division operates.
In a post titled “Resetting Xbox”, Sharma has said that the division’s management layers will see reductions to a maximum of five layers, and where possible, the company will only have 3 layers for its various studios. Through this “flatter organization built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved with the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes,” Sharma wants to streamline the company’s overall workflow. This will include having a cleaner code base, shared services, and vendor spend being reduced by 50 percent.
The reasoning behind this was the fact that Xbox sometimes had 14 layers of management between the studios and the decision makers. Along with this, the company also suffered from ballooning team sizes, with platform teams being 40 percent larger than they were when Xbox Series X/S launched, despite a decline in player base and play time. “That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players,” said Sharma. “As we reset Xbox, we will simplify.”
Another core part of the future of Xbox is the appointment of a new chief operating officer (COO), who will have end-to-end profit and loss responsibilities across content, hardware, platform, and services. The role is being taken up by Helen Chiang, who has previously worked on building up Xbox Live and Minecraft developer Mojang. Chiang’s appointment means that former COO Dave McCarthy is retiring after having worked at Xbox for 17 years.
“She will bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results,” said Sharma about Chaing.
Sharma went on to note that the aim of these changes is to make sure that Xbox has a “bigger future” going forward, and “not a smaller one.”
“The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we’ve seen before. This year, we’ll invest as much in Xbox as we ever have, but we’ll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making Xbox where the world plays and creates.”
As part of the layoffs hitting Xbox, Sharma had also confirmed that four studios – Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, and Undead Labs – are being released. While Double Fine and Compulsion Games will be going independent, retaining their IP in the process, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold. Microsoft hasn’t yet revealed any details about which company is acquiring the two studios, and whether the games they are working on – Senua and State of Decay 3 – will see the light of day.
