Microsoft recently laid off about 1,900 people from its gaming division, including the team at video game company Activision Blizzard, which the company acquired in a $68.7 billion deal last year. At the time, the Xbox maker said Activision was already planning to cut a significant number of jobs. Now, gaming CEO Phil Spencer has given another reason why the company had to cut staff.
Spencer, who sounded the alarm about the industry’s slowdown, said that while the global video game business is large, it is barely growing. He said the layoffs were a result of the need to maintain growth in the company’s Xbox division.
“I have a commitment to the company in that the Xbox business is a profitable and growing part of Microsoft,” he said.
“And we need to put our company in the best position for long-term growth. A lot of that is about developing great products that exceed customer expectations and win millions of customers. But… Let’s be honest: Building a product costs money, including the people working on it, and to be successful you need to have enough of the right people in the right places,” he said. He said.
Spencer said the layoffs were a result of the company “looking at what’s worked in the past, what we need to do, and the overall portfolio of how we operate our business, and between Activision, ZeniMax, and Xbox.” “areas of adjustment,” Spencer said. .
The challenge is finding new playersSpencer said new players are difficult to find and their numbers have peaked, making it difficult for the company to increase the amount of money per player.
“I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job finding new players,” Spencer said in an interview. “Let’s take consoles as a good example. We’ve found 200 million households around the world that play console games. And that number hasn’t changed at all in the last five or six years,” he said. Ta.
Spencer, who sounded the alarm about the industry’s slowdown, said that while the global video game business is large, it is barely growing. He said the layoffs were a result of the need to maintain growth in the company’s Xbox division.
“I have a commitment to the company in that the Xbox business is a profitable and growing part of Microsoft,” he said.
“And we need to put our company in the best position for long-term growth. A lot of that is about developing great products that exceed customer expectations and win millions of customers. But… Let’s be honest: Building a product costs money, including the people working on it, and to be successful you need to have enough of the right people in the right places,” he said. He said.
Spencer said the layoffs were a result of the company “looking at what’s worked in the past, what we need to do, and the overall portfolio of how we operate our business, and between Activision, ZeniMax, and Xbox.” “areas of adjustment,” Spencer said. .
The challenge is finding new playersSpencer said new players are difficult to find and their numbers have peaked, making it difficult for the company to increase the amount of money per player.
“I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job finding new players,” Spencer said in an interview. “Let’s take consoles as a good example. We’ve found 200 million households around the world that play console games. And that number hasn’t changed at all in the last five or six years,” he said. Ta.
