Microsoft
recently laid off around 1,900 people from its gaming unit, including from the teams of
Activision Blizzard video game company
that the company acquired last year in a $68.7 billion deal. At that time, the Xbox maker said that Activision was already planning on eliminating a significant number of jobs. Now, the
gaming unit
CEO Phil Spencer has provided another reason why the company had to reduce headcount.
Spencer, who sounded the alarm about an industry slowdown, said that the global video game business is big but barely growing. He said that the job cuts were a result of a need to keep the company’s Xbox division growing.
“I have a commitment to the company on the Xbox business being a profitable and growing part of Microsoft,” he said.
“And I need to put us in the best position for long-term growth. Most of that is about building great products that exceed their expectations and find millions of customers. But honestly, you know, the cost of building the products inclusive of the people who work on them—I need to make sure we have enough of the right people and the right number of people in the right places for us to succeed,” he said.
According to Spencer, the layoffs were a combination of the company “looking across the full portfolio of what was working, which we have to do, and running the business, as well as areas of alignment between Activision, ZeniMax and Xbox,” Spencer said.
Finding new players a challenge
Spencer said that finding new players is a challenge and it reached a peak, which made it difficult for the company to get more money per player.
“I don't think we're doing a good enough job finding new players,” Spencer said in an interview. “Let's pick consoles as a good example: We found 200 million global households that will play console games. And that number really hasn't changed in the last five, six years,” he said.
English (US) ·