@yourxboxally@bootmanmstz I wish! My back log is crazy! I just buy games that look interesting to me, even during a sale. I just don’t let reviewers dictate my own opinion.
The Xbox restructuring is very telling about where Microsoft is taking the Xbox business.
Putting Halo, Rare and World's Edge under Activision, moving Obsidian under Bethesda, consolidating other teams and cutting another 268 jobs looks like Microsoft simplifying the entire Xbox organization.
Activision and Bethesda already have established publishing infrastructure, so maintaining a massive parallel Xbox Game Studios structure creates duplication (typical of big M&A's).
Microsoft appears to be removing some of those layers and putting more of its studios under the publishing organizations it spent billions acquiring.
I think it also reinforces the shift we've been watching for a while. Xbox isn't being run primarily as a console business anymore. The priority is getting better returns from Microsoft's gaming IP across console, PC, Game Pass, cloud and other platforms, like PlayStation and Nintendo.
Halo moving under Activision might be the clearest example. Halo used to exist largely as a system seller for Xbox hardware. Now the question seems to be. How do you turn Halo into a bigger, more sustainable gaming franchise?
That doesn't mean Xbox hardware is going away soon. It just means hardware is increasingly one part of a much larger gaming business rather than the center everything else revolves around.
But the real question is whether all this consolidation actually produces the margins and growth Microsoft clearly expects from the amount of money it has invested in gaming. Time will tell.
As part of the continuing reset of the business, XBOX will is eliminating 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer.