Microsoft cuts 4,800 jobs, including many at Xbox in a 'reset' of its gaming division

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REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft is cutting 4,800 jobs, about 2.1% of its global workforce, including a large number of workers at its Xbox video game business.

The layoffs included 1,600 Xbox workers, with more to come this year in a broader reorganization designed to “reset” Xbox as it faces heightened competition, the company said Monday.

“Our business today is not healthy,” said a memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who took over the gaming division earlier this year. “We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.”

Sharma said the industry, in which Xbox competes with Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Switch, is facing a severe “hardware crisis” as costs soar for console components.

Beyond the layoffs announced Monday, Sharma said Xbox expects another 1,600 job cuts over the course of the fiscal year that began last week. The company is also spinning off four video game development studios previously acquired by Microsoft.

Nearly three years ago, Microsoft closed a $69 billion deal to acquire gaming giant Activision Blizzard, maker of “Call of Duty” and other blockbuster franchises. The company said at the time it wanted to broaden its game development portfolio and offer a Netflix-like streaming subscription service, but the strategy doesn't appear to have been enough to get ahead of the competition.

“While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected,” Sharma said.

The Xbox cuts are in addition to broader Microsoft layoffs that the software giant's chief people officer Amy Coleman tied to unspecified changes in customer needs.

“I also want to be direct that the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI,” Coleman wrote in a blog post.

The layoffs followed voluntary buyouts that Microsoft began offering to about 8,750 people in May. More than 30% of eligible workers accepted those voluntary retirement offers, Coleman said Monday.