CherryQuench

Healing Content Creator | YouTuber | Twitch Streamer | Building back a library of videos | [email protected]

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

I might be close to being that person, as we push toward 5 years of absence.

We'll see what June 7th brings us for E-Day. Regardless, real progress is being made on non-Gears content I've wanted to make since like 2018.

Either way, content is on the way 🍒

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

@JBriggs43107449 At this point the amount of people that now hate me outweighs the physical & mental stress alongside of always being about 2 weeks away from being homeless

If my needs were met by Gears, I'd stay and be the change I want to see in Gears because I love this franchise

But I can't

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

@KingAbzTV I love these guys. If we get a more standard Horde mode, I need some enemies that get me scared in my cozy little base.

And I'd rather have some grenadier that's insanely pissed off charging at me me over a little exploding ball

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

This is basically my whole life at the moment lol. Cable bundle is now so thick I can't secure my console shelf to the wall

So I bought some shorter cables and longer cable ties.

Gotta go to war with my own work

I might just need to buy a bigger nail to hold things down

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Cable management gets worse the older you get, man.

More dust in everything

More tech

More cables everywhere

New mistakes to make like not labeling cables before unplugging them

Running out of labels

And my body hurts

It'll be worth it, but here's me through the work:

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Kinda feels like we're getting to a boiling point with video games on a few fronts

Cost of hardware
Workload of high-fidelity production
Consumer affordability

These adjustments feel like small shifts to only delay the need for gaming to innovate or fall further

[ASHA @asha_shar]

This is an important email I sent today to all employees at XBOX:

Team,

We are beginning the most significant restructure in XBOX history. After careful consideration, I've made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27. This will include approximately 1,600 role eliminations today, and in addition, four studios will leave XBOX to new management. I recognize that a year-long restructuring creates additional challenges. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make all the necessary changes in a single day, and I wanted to be direct about the scale.

I know this is painful. These changes will directly affect people who have poured their creativity into building XBOX. Many joined us through acquisitions, while others were recruited here, or sought us out because they loved this industry and loved XBOX. Today's decisions do not reflect their talent or dedication.

Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3–10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX.

First, we will reset our content portfolio.

Since 2018, we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined. We now find ourselves competing not only with the largest publishers, but also with smaller independent studios. It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio; in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested. As we reset XBOX, we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision.

Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to management and transition to independent studios with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have entered terms to join new ownership with funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3. In France, Arkane’s management is beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options.

We are also making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects. These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios. None of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions.

In addition, Mojang and King will now report directly to me. These two studios have increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players. They bring critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX.

Second, we will reset our platform.

We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger. Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management. Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined. That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players. As we reset XBOX, we will simplify.

We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3. We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes. And we will streamline how we work across our tools, with a cleaner code base, shared services, and 50% reduced vendor spend.

Third, we are resetting how we operate.

As XBOX grew our headcount, we became more fragmented. Teams, studios, and functions often operate independently, and it became harder to work towards a shared goal, make the right tradeoffs, and get things done.

For the first time, we are establishing a Chief Operating Officer with end-to-end P&L responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services. Helen Chiang has been promoted to this role and will report directly to me. Over nearly two decades at XBOX, Helen has helped build some of our most important businesses, from XBOX Live to leading Mojang and the Minecraft franchise. She will bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results.

Thank you, Dave McCarthy, who is retiring after 17 years with XBOX. Dave has played a defining role in building the platform that millions of players rely on every day and has been a trusted partner through many of the biggest moments in XBOX's history. We wish him all the best.

These changes are about a bigger future for XBOX, not a smaller one. The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we've seen before. This year, we'll invest as much in XBOX as we ever have, but we'll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making XBOX where the world plays and creates.

I want XBOX to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect. I know we can achieve this goal. XBOX has many of the most beloved franchises in entertainment history, talented studios around the world, and we will return to growth in 2027.

History is full of companies that mistake longevity for inevitability. We will not be one of them.

Asha

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

@andresribeiroo Oh dang that's a fantastic idea to tie them in with QR codes. I might need to borrow that lol

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Cable management gets worse the older you get, man.

More dust in everything

More tech

More cables everywhere

New mistakes to make like not labeling cables before unplugging them

Running out of labels

And my body hurts

It'll be worth it, but here's me through the work:

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

@plague97 If it's normally called a Superman, does that make this clip a Justice League? That is an insane shot

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

I love Gears, but we have not had a clean launch out of any title yet. I don't put most of that blame on Epic and TC either - Publishers demanding their money back now cause bad decisions to be made.

I'm putting faith in E-Day, but give these titles the support they need

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Give us a Gears and Halo launch that doesn't play like it's been chucked at a wind turbine and I bet they'd see the numbers they want.

In a more pessimistic view, what games ARE in their prime? Fortnite and CoD are taking hits, LoL and Dota are staying steady at best

Just GTA6?

[IGN @IGN]

Xbox (or XBOX), is apparently divided on the direction of the publisher/hardware manufacturer, as the boss at one of the Xbox Game Studios has told The Game Business.

Read their story here: https://t.co/44AEXpJl9m

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

If / when it's time to go Helios, whatever third party company wants to make the means to launch games from physical media will be an instant purchase

[Idle Sloth @IdleSloth84_]

Xbox's next-gen hardware Project Helix is not expected to include a disc drive.

"As for Project Helix, our sources also suggest that Microsoft's next-generation console will drop the disc drive, too."

via: Windows Central
https://t.co/moewykclrm

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

I need to turn autocorrect off

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

I've been on the E-Day hype train, but I'm gonna give se excitement to Turok since I go way back

Played Turok 3 especially on mass repeat and used to play Turok 2 online. It was my first taste of online shooters

Welcome back, Turok!

[Idle Sloth @IdleSloth84_]

Turok: Origins | Gameplay Trailer

Coming to XBOX Series X|S, PS5, Switch 2 and Steam in Fall 2026

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

@babybinx326 I just noticed that playing a little Gears 4 - I was going for leg shots with a few different guns and sometimes their whole body would explode, sometimes they'd fall over, but it was kinda underwhelming

And games like Dead Space have had it figured out for a while now

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Zoom in on these pictures

The detail is insane - Wrinkles under the eyes, the individual beard hairs, pores, the little jagged distortions in their irises

Jesus

[Idle Sloth @IdleSloth84_]

Gears of War: E-Day | Bravo Squad | October 6

XBOX Console Exclusive

XBOX Game Pass Ultimate

XBOX Play Anywhere

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Give this drone an Oscar

#GearsofWar

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Learning Twitter has a 512 MB file size limit for videos, but hey if anyone wanted to watch me do Venom Run on Incon

It's unlisted so no big video yet, but seeing how 2k resolution uploads look with ~25k bitrate recording from my laptop

https://t.co/3pOojB2rwE

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

I love everything about this photo #GearsofWar

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

I also got a NAS drive earlier this year right before storage and RAM prices shot up

Sitting on 18 TB of network connected storage to video edit anywhere in my house and that's gonna come in handy very soon

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Once again my impulsive decisions are CARRYING ME

Right after I saw the E-Day Direct I had a gut feeling prices would go up for E-Day and GTA 6, not down

This news still sucks but I am breathing a sigh of relief that I've been stopping myself from overthinking things

[XBOX @XBOX]

Updated XBOX Console Prices: https://t.co/aFezecPGp7

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Ok having a laptop that's strong enough to play Gears 5 is amazing. I'm chillin' in my living room getting my ass kicked trying to solo Escape runs while I'm watching my girlfriend make cursed Miis for Tomodachi Life

This is good times

[CherryQuench @CherryQuench]

Quality testing new Gears games on PC always feels like a lot because the amount of settings TC lets you adjust is insane

That being said, if anyone figured out what causes short freezes when enemies first spawn in on Horde, hit a guy up😅