Originally announced as a reset spanning the “next hundred days”, the Xbox reorganisation has now stretched past that with no end in sight, and no coherent vision of what comes next
Image credit: Sebastian DC on Unsplash
Asha Sharma marked the conclusion of her first hundred days as Xbox CEO with a public blog post in which she called for the next hundred days to be a “reset” of the business. Highlighting the division’s low “accountability margin” and declining revenues, along with macro factors like the hardware component crisis, Sharma’s post was a fairly obvious omen of layoffs to come – corporate executives don’t say things like “we have found ourselves over extended” or start talking about “hard truths” unless a whole lot of people are about to lose their jobs.
Sharma’s second hundred days ended a little over a week ago, and the promised reset has seen hundreds and hundreds of layoffs across Xbox studios and business units, along with the shuttering or divestment of several entire studios. Even for an industry that has become grimly accustomed to swingeing cuts and layoffs in recent years, this reset is particularly brutal.
The fate of Hellblade developer Ninja Theory remains uncertain | Image credit: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
The whole point of a reset,
