The incredible shrinking Xbox: Five studios, 3,200 employees let go
The incredible shrinking Xbox: Five studios, 3,200 employees let go
难以置信的Xbox大缩编：裁员3200人，剥离五家工作室
Last month, Xbox executives laid out some “hard truths” about Microsoft’s struggling gaming division that they said would require a difficult “Xbox reset.” This morning, Microsoft revealed the brutal shape of that “reset,” announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs and the divestment of five smaller studios that the company has spent years acquiring and shepherding.
上个月，Xbox高管们针对微软陷入困境的游戏部门提出了一些“残酷的真相”，并表示需要进行一次艰难的“Xbox重置”。今天上午，微软揭示了这次“重置”的残酷面貌，宣布计划裁员3200人，并剥离五家公司多年来收购和扶持的小型工作室。
Half of those 3,200 layoffs are effective today, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wrote, while the other half will come by the end of Microsoft’s 2027 fiscal year (which runs through June 30, 2027). CNBC cites “a person familiar with the matter” in reporting that these cuts amount to roughly 20 percent of the Xbox division. When combined with 1,600 newly announced layoffs across the rest of Microsoft, the company as a whole is letting go of just over 2 percent of its workforce. But The Seattle Times reports that Microsoft’s total headcount has remained relatively stable thanks to other hiring.
新任Xbox首席执行官Asha Sharma写道，这3200名员工中，有一半将于今日离职，另一半将在微软2027财年（截至2027年6月30日）结束前离职。据CNBC援引“知情人士”报道，此次裁员约占Xbox部门总人数的20%。加上微软其他部门新宣布的1600人裁员，该公司整体裁员比例略高于员工总数的2%。但据《西雅图时报》报道，得益于其他岗位的招聘，微软的总员工人数保持相对稳定。
The newest Xbox cuts follow a string of Microsoft gaming layoffs in recent years, including 1,900 jobs cut in the wake of the Activision Blizzard acquisition and 650 jobs cut later in 2024. In July of 2025, another round of layoffs led to the cancellation of a number of in-development gaming projects at Xbox such as Perfect Dark and Everwild. In today’s announcement, though, Sharma said that “none of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions.”
此次最新的Xbox裁员是微软近年来一系列游戏部门裁员的延续，其中包括动视暴雪收购案后的1900人裁员，以及2024年晚些时候的650人裁员。2025年7月，另一轮裁员导致Xbox多个在研游戏项目被取消，如《完美黑暗》（Perfect Dark）和《Everwild》。不过，Sharma在今天的公告中表示：“我们已公开宣布的第一方游戏或项目，均不会因本次裁员而取消。”
Sharma characterized these Xbox staffing reductions as a way to “simplify” a division that has become bloated with complicating layers of middle management. Some decisions in the gaming division currently pass through “14 layers” of decision-makers, Sharma said, before promising that the new Xbox will be a “flatter organization” with “no more than 5, and where possible, 3” layers of management involved in any decision.
Sharma将此次Xbox的人员精简描述为“简化”部门的一种方式，该部门此前因复杂的中层管理层级而变得臃肿。Sharma表示，目前游戏部门的一些决策需要经过“14层”决策者，并承诺新的Xbox将成为一个“更扁平的组织”，任何决策涉及的管理层级将“不超过5层，尽可能控制在3层以内”。
Today’s announced layoffs also seem focused on reining in a large Xbox platform team, which Sharma said has grown “40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined.” That could have an outsized impact on the development of Project Helix, the recently announced hybrid console that will also play generic PC games.
今天宣布的裁员似乎也旨在控制庞大的Xbox平台团队。Sharma称，尽管玩家基数和游戏时长有所下降，但该团队的规模“比本世代初期增长了40%”。这可能会对“Project Helix”的开发产生巨大影响，该项目是最近宣布的一款也能运行通用PC游戏的混合主机。
Hit the road, small studios
小型工作室“各奔东西”
Amid these layoffs, Microsoft is also executing a massive reversal of its studio acquisition spree that dates back to 2018. Compulsion Games (We Happy Few) and Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts) will “return to management” and operate independently with full control of their intellectual property, Sharma writes. Ninja Theory (Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice) and Undead Labs (State of Decay), meanwhile, have been purchased by other unnamed companies, while France’s Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Prey) is reviewing “potential strategic options” to operate outside of Xbox.
在裁员的同时，微软也在对其自2018年以来的工作室收购狂潮进行大规模逆转。Sharma写道，Compulsion Games（《少数幸运儿》）和Double Fine Productions（《脑航员》）将“回归管理层”，并独立运营，完全掌控其知识产权。与此同时，Ninja Theory（《地狱之刃：塞娜的献祭》）和Undead Labs（《腐烂国度》）已被其他未具名的公司收购，而法国的Arkane Studios（《羞辱》、《掠食》）正在评估在Xbox体系外运营的“潜在战略选择”。
Sharma bluntly admitted that these smaller studio acquisitions have been a financial mistake for Microsoft, resulting in a loss of “64 cents for every dollar we invested” in a “typical year.” In recent years, Sharma writes that Xbox has “learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio” and that “it is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio.”
Sharma直言不讳地承认，这些小型工作室的收购对微软来说是一个财务错误，在“典型年份”里，每投资一美元就会损失“64美分”。Sharma写道，近年来Xbox“认识到我们并非所有类型工作室的最佳归宿”，并且“拥有每一家伟大的独立工作室既不可能，也不可取”。
At the same time, some of the larger game studios Microsoft has acquired are still apparently considered very desirable parts of its portfolio. Mojang (Minecraft) and King (Candy Crush) will now report directly to Sharma, reflecting their outsize share of Microsoft’s monthly player base and the “critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation” they bring to the gaming division, Sharma writes. And across Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda, and Xbox Game Studios, Sharma writes that Microsoft will be “shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects.”
与此同时，微软收购的一些大型游戏工作室显然仍被视为其投资组合中非常理想的部分。Sharma写道，Mojang（《我的世界》）和King（《糖果传奇》）现在将直接向他汇报，这反映了它们在微软月活跃玩家基数中占据的巨大份额，以及它们为游戏部门带来的“关键地理、人口统计学和差异化优势”。此外，在动视、暴雪、贝塞斯达（Bethesda）和Xbox游戏工作室方面，Sharma表示微软将“调整投资方向，专注于更高优先级的项目”。
The shift in Microsoft’s gaming priorities from small indie acquisitions to massive conglomerates has been apparent in recent years, with Microsoft shutting down Arkane Austin (Redfall) and Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) shortly after finalizing its $69 billion investment in Activision Blizzard King in 2023. But today’s round of studio divestments seems to put a hard stop on the era where Microsoft was willing to put money toward pulling interesting indie developers into the Xbox fold.
近年来，微软游戏战略重心从小型独立工作室收购转向大型企业集团的趋势已十分明显。2023年，在完成对动视暴雪King 690亿美元的投资后不久，微软就关闭了Arkane Austin（《红霞岛》）和Tango Gameworks（《完美音浪》）。但今天这一轮工作室剥离似乎为微软愿意投入资金将有趣的独立开发者纳入Xbox麾下的时代画上了句号。
In this new era, Microsoft will be refocused on taking big swings with the “industry-defining franchises” that it said last month had suffered from a lack of adequate funding in recent years. That’s good news for fans of Call of Duty, Fallout, and Halo, but less good news for fans of the offbeat experiments that have until now filled out Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.
在这个新时代，微软将重新聚焦于那些“定义行业的大型IP”，上个月微软曾表示，这些IP近年来因缺乏足够的资金投入而受到影响。这对《使命召唤》、《辐射》和《光环》的粉丝来说是个好消息，但对于那些一直以来充实着Xbox Game Pass订阅库的非主流实验性游戏的粉丝来说，这并不是什么好消息。
It’s a hard pivot that Sharma admits is necessary because of bad Xbox investments in recent years, including a focus on Game Pass subscriptions and multi-platform games that “have created meaningful value,” but “did not grow at the pace we expected.” Those relative failures led to an Xbox division that essentially threw good money after bad and “added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome,” Sharma wrote.
Sharma承认，这是一个必要的艰难转型，因为Xbox近年来的一些投资决策失误，包括对Game Pass订阅和多平台游戏的过度关注，虽然“创造了有意义的价值”，但“增长速度未达预期”。Sharma写道，这些相对的失败导致Xbox部门陷入了“投入更多资金去弥补亏损”的恶性循环，并“增加了更多的团队、更多的投资和更多的时间，希望能有更好的结果”。
At the same time, those moves weakened Microsoft’s core gaming business, Sharma writes, resulting in a division “operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.” But the people responsible for those strategic failures are not the ones who will be bearing the brunt of the division-wide changes announced today. “I know this is painful,” Sharma writes. “These changes will directly affect people who have poured their creativity into building Xbox. Many joined us through acquisitions, while others…”
与此同时，Sharma写道，这些举措削弱了微软的核心游戏业务，导致该部门“运营利润率比同类平台和发行商业务低3到10倍”。但那些对这些战略失败负责的人，并不是今天宣布的部门级变革中首当其冲的受害者。“我知道这很痛苦，”Sharma写道。“这些变化将直接影响那些倾注创造力来构建Xbox的人们。许多人是通过收购加入我们的，而其他人……”