Microsoft has announced what Xbox CEO Asha Sharma called "the most significant restructure in Xbox history", cutting 1,600 jobs this summer with a further 1,600 expected over the following year. Yet buried in the memo announcing the layoffs was an ambitious stated ambition: for Xbox to become one of the few companies that "entertains more than a billion people each day". The Verge argues this goal sounds nearly impossible given that Xbox is being asked to reach a far larger audience with a much smaller team, after Microsoft spent billions with little to show for it, during one of the industry's most challenging periods.

The restructuring will spin off four internal studios — Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs and Ninja Theory — as independent developers, while remaining teams focus on major franchises such as Halo, Gears of War, Minecraft and Candy Crush. Helen Chiang, formerly head of the Minecraft franchise, has been promoted to chief operating officer. Sharma claims Xbox loses 64 cents for every dollar invested and plans to expand into China, India and Hollywood. However, the article notes cuts at strong studios like Bethesda, id and Obsidian seem to contradict the blockbuster-focused strategy, and questions what metric could plausibly reach a billion daily users when King's games draw around 200 million monthly players.