Microsoft dashes game developer dreams

According to Axios, Microsoft is pulling back from its years-long gaming shopping spree. In a restructuring of its Xbox unit announced Monday, the company disclosed thousands of job cuts and plans to divest five studios. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are going to undisclosed buyers, Double Fine and Compulsion Games will be spun back out to their founders, and a sale process for France's Arkane is just beginning. Group CEO Asha Sharma wrote in a memo that the business is, quote, not healthy, adding that in a typical year the company lost sixty-four cents for every dollar it invested in small and mid-sized studios. It's a sharp turn from the era of Microsoft's seven point five billion dollar ZeniMax deal and its sixty-three billion dollar purchase of Activision Blizzard. Sharma frames the moves as reorganization, not retreat.

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