It looks like many Microsoft employees are going to start the year of on a sour note following the shocking announcement concerning the companies plans to cut back on expenses. It has been recently revealed that at least 1,900 employees from both Xbox and Activision are going to be laid off in the near future. There is no question that 2023 was a great year for high profile video game releases but a very turbulent year for employees of gaming companies due to how bad the economy is. It should also be noted that Activision’s latest high profile video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ended up being a massive flop and was panned by critics following its release in Q4 2023. Microsoft had recently won a lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission involving the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion in 2023 and obviously the tech giant is not too happy right now. There are many people who wonder how these layoffs are going to effect the Call of Duty franchise going forward and whether or not more job cuts are going to happen later in the year. 

Even though, Microsoft reportedly earned more than $211 billion in revenue this past year the layoffs announced by the tech giant is happening due to changes being made within the structure of the company. Back in October 2023 it was revealed that an executive named Sarah Bond was named as the new president Xbox which was blockbuster news following its announcement a few months back. Its obvious that Microsoft was going to make structural changes following the purchase of Activision-Blizzard and the corporation wants to do everything possible to avoid more losses in the future. Despite, Call of Duty: MW3 being a failure one of the best things that Xbox has going for them right now is Starfield which reached over 12 million players towards the end of Q4 2023. While the Microsoft layoffs are shocking its apart of a larger trend involving job cuts concerning from gaming and technology companies which has been going on since last year.