Saturday, September 26th 2026
Microsoft CEO Says Xbox's "Streamlining" Is "Great To See" Following Recent Layoffs
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called Xbox's ongoing job cuts "great to see," commenting on the restructuring led by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. The remark follows Xbox's latest layoffs, which cut 268 more jobs on top of the 1,600 eliminated earlier this year, part of a plan that has already folded studios together, reshuffled franchises like Halo, and pushed several developers out entirely. Nadella made the comment on the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath during a broader interview about Xbox's place within Microsoft. When asked about his feelings about the state and future of Xbox, Nadella said:
Calling the cuts "great to see" probably lands very differently for the thousands of employees who actually lost their jobs this year than it does from Nadella's position. Sharma has defended the restructuring by pointing to Xbox's margins, which she says trail comparable platform and publishing businesses by 3 to 10 times. Chief Content Officer Matt Booty said the company is now roughly three-quarters of the way through the announced cuts, so more changes are apparently still on the way before the fiscal year ends.
Sources:
Sources Podcast with Alex Heath, via Kotaku
"I feel fantastic. There's some amount of streamlining the team is doing, and Asha is doing, which is great to see. And then we have to invent the right sustainable business model that allows us to deliver gaming to more and more people. That has always been the goal, which is, we want to be a great publisher and a great platform provider for games across both PCs and Xboxes."
74 Comments on Microsoft CEO Says Xbox's "Streamlining" Is "Great To See" Following Recent Layoffs
Keep at it Nutella
On the other hand, the reason they even have that many people to lay off is their "embrace, extend, extinguish" philosophy of acquiring indie studios and then letting them die, so no.
wow any/all those people with mortgages, kids/families, etc.
The whole world on a downward spiral, but look at all the leaders and execs and easy to see why...........
See, how hard was that to come up with? Sound like a human instead of a Bond villain.
I'm sure the couple of gutted studios, working in fear of being closed next day, will produce some great exclusives that will save whole xbox platform, right?
(Soon: All to be replaced by AI anyway, we never needed these humans in a first place, playable ai slop with ads for everyone)
I can't be the only one that agrees with him though? Other than the RIPs of studios - which I've learned to live with ever since Westwood - these people were pulling a Microsoft salary while just not putting out good video games which is the entire point of why they exist and we're talking about them.
Blah blah I'm callous blah blah for shame blah blah I've never been fired. All untrue.
I want more great games to be played by the maximum number of people possible. This may increase the chances of that.
Can't we TPU Intellectuals say that some of these changes being for the best is possible while acknowledging the time for emotion is past? Or is my optimism showing?
Nevermind that you are jumping to conclusions based on zero evidence. Just because the games were bad, doesn't inherently mean the layment were immediately at fault.
Also we have always been at war with eastasia.
Also yes a majority of these game companies putting out failure after failure is the fault of the leadership and the C suite suits, blaming this on the workers is some "corporations are people too" mentality.
The new leadership gutting studios to chase short term profits isn't going to save Xbox, Xbox is pretty much dead at this point and I question what is going to happen to the remaining studios M$ owns.
And more importantly: Why didn't the other Xbox studios do that?
:twitch:
Regards,
Fred.
Unfortunately for them, nadella has increased Microsofts value by over 1000% since taking over in 2014, and it is more profitable then ever. So as far as his bosses are concerned, he's doing great.
Ultimately, the merit of a product lies in its profitability. It is the closest we have to a universal metric of excellence. Every other criteria is much more subjective and dependent on the opinions of each consumer.
Well, you could argue that some studios or publishers produce games with profit as a secondary goal, but that is evidently not the case with Microsoft. And they are acting in accordance to their pursuit of that primary goal. Profit.
There are so many savings they could make.
The Xbox division was so poorly managed that many of us thought it was victim of Microsoft corporate, but in reality it was just Phil doing Phil stuff
But if you tip too far into pleasing shareholders and not customers (and staff), you end up in position like blizzard. now microsoft-xbox-activision-blizzard.
A good leader doesn't allow incompetent people and activists to sink the company, he fires them, so they don't bother the good ones. Phil did the opposite