British publication Sky News has claimed that tech giant Microsoft, parent company of one the three major console manufacturers on the market (that being Xbox), is set to lay off approximately 5% of its staff, and with Microsoft employing about 220,000 people, that's going to be almost 11,000 workers.
Sky News clarifies that that specific figure was unable to be verified, but that corresponding analysts wouldn't be surprised if the amount was even higher than that. The company is set to present an earnings report this January 24 to detail its financial standing to its public investors, and it's likely that here is where we'll get confirmation of this mass layoff and its exact details.
The precise reason behind these layoffs isn't stated, but it can probably be attributed to economic factors that go beyond the tech and gaming sector. Microsoft's market share value has been on a steady decline throughout the entirety of 2022, starting the year at approximately $300, and currently standing at about $240.
Many other large tech and software companies have been going about mass layoffs over the past few weeks. Amazon recently let go of approximately 6% of its workforce, resulting in 18,000 employees losing their jobs. Sky News also reports that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, cut over 11,000 jobs, while Salesforce cut about 8,000. In Microsoft's specific case, its persistently troublesome pending acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard may have been a factor in how much the company was forced to cut costs.
After all, it's been confirmed that Microsoft will go to court to make its case against the United States FTC (Federal Trade Commission), which is claiming that this acquisition would harm fair competition in the video game market. Microsoft will likely have to pay a myriad of legal fees to give itself the best chances of success. Furthermore, if the acquisition does go through, that's a bill of nearly $69 billion that Microsoft will have to fork over on behalf of Xbox, on top of the $7.5 billion it already paid for publisher Bethesda.