Asha Sharma and Matt Booty, the current top executives of Microsoft’s gaming division, have shared a letter they sent to all Xbox employees. Speaking about how Xbox Game Pass has grown after eight months of losses and reminding about the exclusivity of Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution, they wanted to talk about the future of the company. Which does not seem very positive for many of its employees.
A company full of contradictions
In the letter, they state, among other things, that despite Xbox having a profit margin of 3%, this is lower than the profit margin from last year. This will lead to a restructuring of the company during this fiscal year to ensure they meet their expectations. This means that in the coming months they will conduct a round of massive layoffs that could also include the closure of one or several studios, although nothing has been confirmed in this regard.
At the same time, they have also wanted to emphasize that, due to the complexity of the Xbox structure, they will seek potential acquisitions. Looking to enhance their capabilities in hardware, PC, mobile, and streaming, in order not to depend on third parties, we should expect in the coming months and years that they will buy new companies to strengthen those areas where they consider themselves weaker, especially those not directly related to video game development.
To conclude, they talked about how all of this is also influenced by the hardware component crisis due to the construction of AI data. Something that Microsoft is one of the main culprits of, as 45% of the company’s tax benefits depend on OpenAI settling its debts, and Sam Altman’s company has reserved 40% of the world’s memory production. This is why this reboot for Xbox, while it may excite someone, doesn’t seem to be very different from everything they have done so far.