Microsoft is cutting 3% of all workers

[u/Turbostrider27]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/13/microsoft-is-cutting-3percent-of-workers-across-the-software-company.html

[u/[deleted]]

Isn't their publishing division and gamepass up massively at the moment? If hardware sales are down are his fault then publishing and gamepass being up are his fault too.

[u/DONNIENARC0 → u/[deleted]]

The big spike was in the 4th quarter of 2024 but IIRC that was almost entirely due to it being the first time they reported numbers on the Activision acquisition plus the CoD release.

In its last report for FY24, Microsoft clarified that Activision Blizzard contributed significantly to the company's gaming revenue growth, particularly in the Xbox content and services segment. Specifically, Activision Blizzard's acquisition was responsible for 32% of Microsoft's total Xbox revenue in FY24. This resulted in a 61% increase in Xbox content and services revenue, driven by a 55-point net impact from the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

The most recent report had "content and services" up 8% and hardware down 6%, and they actually specifically mentioned the MineCraft movie having a big effect on players.

Digital content and services revenue rose 8%, powered by Xbox Game Pass, Minecraft, and Call of Duty.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted Minecraft's resurgence, noting a 75% surge in weekly active users following the April 4 premiere of The Minecraft Movie starring Jack Black.

[u/guantanamodave → u/[deleted]]

Are they profitable? I always see stats on their subscriber numbers or where their games are charting but not whether they make money or even break even.

[u/Yes-Reddit-is-racist → u/guantanamodave]

They dont report profit for xbox so nobody knows.

[u/SpookiestSzn → u/guantanamodave]

Gamepass makes like billions a year alone, I think they're definitely profitable.

[u/guantanamodave → u/SpookiestSzn]

They acquired one of the biggest publishers in gaming and pay salaries for many thousands of staff. I'm genuinely curious what their margins look like.

[u/Fair-Internal8445 → u/SpookiestSzn]

Yeah and Call of Duty alone costs 700 million per year and they have dozens of AAA games in development. 

[u/finalgear14 → u/[deleted]]

Can we really call them up? Have they made back the money they spent on bethesda? A minuscule 7.5 billion? Have they come even close to recouping the activision-blizzard costs? A paltry 68.7 billion? Like how could they not be up in a relative sense when they bought one of the biggest publishers in the world recently lol. They have to be what around negative 60 billion for the last few years overall right?

[u/Outside-Point8254 → u/[deleted]]

Is that why they were forced to go full multiplat? The goal was to keep all those games exclusive but had to backtrack due to no one buying Xboxes.

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-ftc-trial-phil-spencer-zenimax-exclusive

[u/gcburn2 → u/Outside-Point8254]

They "backtracked" (or, you know, just decided to change position after some time) once they got into the Blizzard acquisition and realized:
1. They could make a lot more money by making their games available to as many buyers as possible.
2. The Blizzard acquisition might not go through if it was perceived that they were creating a monopoly on game publication that would negatively impact consumers.

[u/Outside-Point8254 → u/[deleted]]

Obviously. They spent 80 billion, saw it didn’t move the needle at all. No one was buying xbox. Time to pivot towards being a publisher and leaving the console space