Despite recently having overseen the laying off of 268 staff in the second of multiple rounds of cuts planned for this financial year, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied that their are plans to sell Microsoft's gaming division. The bloodletting at Xbox in recent months has not only seen workers let go, but the place of studios within the company's structure being altered. Rather than lots of studios with their own degree of independence, Xbox have been parting ways with many studios and consolidating what remains under a small number of arms led by the bosses of the likes of Activision and Bethesda.
Prior to Sharma overseeing those changes, The Information (via Reuters) reported in June that Microsoft execs Satya Nadella and Amy Hood were considering potentially spinning out or restructuring Xbox as a wholly owned subsidiary. Such a move could in theory help facilitate the likes of a sale or Xbox veing run as a joint venture with other companies further down the line.
For now, Sharma has denied to the New York Times, amid a slew of rather sycophantic painting of her as millennial boss delivering necessary "disruption", that any such plans are in place. "Xbox is not for sale," she said. "We will do whatever it takes to set the company up for success, and we will look at the right partnerships, the right operating model and everything needed to achieve that."
Nadella has recently praised the "streamlining" Sharma's been enacting at Xbox, in what the company are desperately trying to sell as a great reset capable of restoring the division to their glory days and paving the way for a future in which their execs can bathe in even more money.
Following last month's cuts, Xbox have said they're now "roughly three-quarters" of the way through the cuts and studio divesititures set in motion after Sharma was picked to replace outgoing CEO Phil Spencer - the latter slinking off into retirement.
Of course, if Xbox was to be sold once its execs are done with their current flood of layoffs and rejigging, Microsoft would need to find a willing buyer to fork out cash for some or all of it. Given Xbox's current state, wheeling away from Game Pass and a multiplatform approach as the RAM crisis makes next-gen consoles look like they'll be hugely expensive, it's likely not the most attractive proposition for those seeking an easy way to make their own number graphs point ever more sharply upwards.
Other companies have managed to find investors to put some cash into their efforts to turn things around, with Ubisoft turning to Tencent for just that in 2025. In that case, the Chinese corp got a stake in the new subsidiary of Ubisoft formed to oversee future Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six, and Far Cry games.
As things stand, it appears to make sense from the outside that Microsoft's execs would be content to let Sharma's cuts and changes play out. If the tighter focus on producing new entries in established tentpole series like Fallout more quickly and improving Halo's fortunes does start to pay dividends, that'll likely make any potential sales pitch further down the line easier to put together, even if only certain bits of Xbox ended up being hawked.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/xbox-is-not-for-sale-despite-all-of-the-layoffs-and-neat-repackaging-of-studios-within-microsofts-corporate-structure-ceo-asha-sharma-says
