Microsoft said Monday that it will cut 3,200 jobs from its struggling Xbox video game business.<\/p>\n
The technology giant will immediately eliminate 1,600 positions, while other jobs will be cut as four gaming studios leave the Xbox unit.<\/p>\n
“Our business today is not healthy,” Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who took over the gaming division earlier this year, said in a memo to Xbox workers released by Microsoft. “We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.”<\/p>\n
Sharma also acknowledged that Microsoft’s investments in Game Pass, a subscription gaming service, and multi-platform services have grown more slowly than expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“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,” he said.<\/p>\n
Microsoft announced in June that it would raise the prices of its Xbox<\/span> consoles starting August 1, citing rising costs of storage and memory components in electronic devices.\u00a0<\/p>\n The price of consoles with 512 GB of storage will increase by $100 to nearly $500, while those with 1 TB of storage will increase by $150.<\/p>\n