More cuts are reportedly on the way at Xbox, with some ZeniMax staff being offered voluntary severance agreements this week. This news comes from a Bloomberg The report states that employees at the Xbox organization have been told that more cuts are being made.
The potential layoffs follow Xbox’s decision earlier this week to shutter four Bethesda studios, including Hi-Fi Rush team Tango Gameworks and Redfall developer Arkane Austin. As far as employees offering voluntary severance agreements, Bloomberg Reports that producers, quality assurance testers, and other ZeniMax personnel are receiving them.
The publication also stated that Tango Gameworks and Arcane Austin closed this week because they were in the process of building new projects and hiring additional staff for said projects, according to ZeniMax chief Jill Braff and Xbox president Matt Botti suggested during a town hall. Hall held this week. Xbox and ZeniMax chose to close these studios, both early in the process of creating a new game, rather than lock the studio deep into development of the projects.
In other places Bloomberg’s The report, which details an internal town hall held at Xbox following the studio’s closure this week, claims Botti has spread its studios too thin, like “peanut butter on bread,” and that That the company’s leaders suffered from inferiority complex. Xbox closed three studios and ZeniMax Online Studios absorbed Roundhouse Games to free up resources. Braff said during the meeting, “It’s hard to support nine studios around the world with a lean core team with an ever-growing plate of things to do. I think we were going to be exhausted.”
The studio closings follow 1,900 layoffs at Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax in January, and the games industry has seen more than 10,000 layoffs this year alone.
[Source: Bloomberg]
How do you feel about Xbox? Let us know in the comments below!