The creator of Xbox, Microsoft, has laid off hundreds of employees in various departments.
Sources have told Insider that fewer than 1,000 employees have been laid off from the various divisions, which are believed to include Xbox, Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technology organization, and the CTO’s office.
Studio Alpha, Microsoft’s “serious games” initiative that focused on wargame simulations, is also in jeopardy, according to a source, along with the Mission Expansion team.
Microsoft’s Mission Engineering team could also be affected, as its boss, Zach Kramer, sent an email to employees announcing that it was going to “deprioritize work already in progress.”
The email continues: “This is hard to do. There are many ideas that could have an impact and each of us has worked very hard, but we must make trade-offs as resources are not unlimited and time is at its most scarce.” everybody.”
Microsoft veteran KC Lemson was one of those affected, announcing on Twitter that he had lost his role as a product manager in the CFO’s office. Another fired staffer told Insider that he had only been hired a month earlier.
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business professionals on a regular basis, and make appropriate structural adjustments,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Insider. “We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.”
Microsoft announced in July that it planned to lay off less than 1% of its workforce, currently about 180,000 people, putting about 1,800 at risk. However, it has not been confirmed whether this latest wave of layoffs is related to the July announcement.
It comes in a testing period for Microsoft as the company tries to prove that Xbox’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is good for consumers and the market.
Activision Blizzard is also immersed in controversy, as another sexual harassment lawsuit was filed against the company in early October, adding to a series of previous accusations that began with the lawsuit by the state of California against the developer studio of Call of Duty.
