Microsoft announced on July 6th, 2026, that over the next year they would be cutting 3,200 jobs from the Xbox division. The first 1,600 employees laid off will happen immediately. Xbox is also divesting five development studios. The company\u2019s gaming strategy has struggled to scale. Cost structures were high while the subscriber count for Xbox Game Pass fell severely short of internal projections (30 million versus the expected 77 million).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess raising subscription prices is not a good strategy for adding Game Pass subscribers. I personally don’t have a Game Pass subscription, mainly because I don’t play enough to get my money’s worth. Some would argue that if only you download two Game Pass games per month it becomes a good value. Yes, but it’s another recurring subscription that I don’t really need. Something about paying to get multiplayer access also rubs me the wrong way. I’m from a generation that only needed a PC with a good internet connection for multiplayer games. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of Xbox’s fall from grace. The PlayStation 5 outsells the Xbox Series X|S, with an estimated lifetime total of over 91.9 million units compared to Xbox’s 34.6 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, both platforms have experienced a sharp decline in hardware sales due to recent price hikes. Sony just announced that they would be going all digital by January 2028. This has upset many gamers as they try to imagine not being able to share or resell a digital game they had purchased. I think they could solve this by having a unique code that would allow a game to be transferred to a new owner. Xbox is probably not too far away from making a similar announcement. Xbox already has consoles that are all-digital. Almost every game disc that you insert requires a massive digital update. Some newer games don’t even come with a disc in the case. All you get in the case is a code so you can download the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My concern is that with less people playing and buying new game consoles, there will be less demand for refurbished game controllers. I’m starting to see more listings on Ebay for bulk lots of broken Xbox controllers. The listings look like they are from sellers who repair controllers and are now trying to unload unrepaired inventory. When demand evaporates, you don’t want to be sitting on a bunch of broken controllers. That’s why I never buy more than two or three non-working controllers at a time. Right now, I have 3 controllers that need repair and 6 that are ready for listing. So, I’m not too invested. But if you have a large repair shop or a used game store, the latest announcements from Microsoft and Sony are harbingers of dread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Microsoft announced on July 6th, 2026, that over the next year they would be cutting 3,200 jobs from the Xbox division. The first 1,600 employees laid off will happen immediately. Xbox is also divesting five development studios. The company\u2019s gaming strategy has struggled to scale. Cost structures were high while<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1172,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions\/1172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}