July 2nd was a sad day. Microsoft laid off 9000 employees from all across their company, closed some game studios, and cancelled some projects. Among the projects cancelled, are an unannounced MMO, a new game by Romero Games, and the Perfect Dark remake. The cuts come after last month’s Summer Game Fest presentation where new games were shown and before next month’s Gamescom, where it’s sure to show new games. It was announced that Halo would show off what’s next for the franchise in October too. Xbox has more people playing their games and has announced that new hardware is coming, both through partnerships with ASUS and with their next generation Xbox console. The 9000 layoffs is around 4% of all Microsoft employees.
A rumor also came out that Phil Spencer will be retiring in the next few years and is currently working with Sarah Bond and her team to provide a smooth transition. The rumored retirement was said to come shortly after Xbox launches it’s next gen console. Head of Xbox communications, Kari Perez, said that “Phil is not retiring anytime soon.” Does that mean the rumor is false? That depends on what you consider “soon” to be. We know that Xbox is not going to be launching in 2025, so at the earliest it would be late 2026. That would mean that Phil Spencer would retire around early to middle 2027 at the earliest. More likely, the console would be out in 2027 or 2028, which would mean that Phil Spencer could be retiring in 2028 or 2029.
Would they announce his departure if it wasn’t for another few years? Probably not. Phil Spencer is the same age as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, announcing Spencer’s retirement now would probably have people thinking about Satya Nadella’s retirement. That could cause people to start the question of the future of the company, which in turn, could cause stockholders to sell their shares.
Hopefully everyone who is affected by these layoffs find new opportunities quickly.
