Massive job cuts hit Microsoft; 'Flight Simulator' studio team allegedly axed, GSB members cut PDF Print E-mail
Written by Phil Meza   
Thursday, 22 January 2009
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Citing an 11% drop in their net income for fiscal Q2, Microsoft announced today the removal of nearly 5,000 jobs company-wide. 1,400 positions will be cut today, with 3,600 to follow in the next 18 months. Those areas to be affected by the lay-offs include research & development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, and IT - with "a large portion" of employees (ie: the entire team) at the company's wholly-owned ACES Studio, developers of the Flight Simulator series and the upcoming Microsoft Train Simulator 2, also alleged to have been axed.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, said today: "While we are not immune to the effects of the economy, I am confident in the strength of our product portfolio and soundness of our approach. We will continue to manage expenses and invest in long-term opportunities to deliver value to customers and shareholders, and we will emerge an even stronger industry leader than we are today.”

The company state that these unfortunate actions will slash roughly $1.5 billion of their annual operating expenses, as well as reducing their capital expenditures for fiscal year 2009 by about $700 million.

Our thoughts are with the folks tragically affected today. One upside: It is looking like, as of now, the majority of the Entertainment & Devices Division seems to be fairly safe - unless they're not. However, following the closure of the Gamerscore Blog last week, several of the team members have reported in that the entire team are "casualties" - including a few of our friends, Chris Paladino and Nelson Rodriguez. A sad day indeed.

[Update]: Things just got interesting. According to sources, "the bulk" of today's 1,400-person lay-offs did in fact fall under the E&D division umbrella - these are the Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile folks, in case you're unaware. Sort of explains the axing of the Communiy Team, huh? Uh oh.



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Last Updated ( Friday, 23 January 2009 )
 
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