Xbox Kills Ninja Theory After Spending $20B to Lose Money
Another day, another brilliant masterclass in corporate gaming management. Our favorite green giant just decided that making critically acclaimed games is overrated, kicking off a massive fire sale of its legendary studios to save a sinking ship.
The execution axe fell right on Ninja Theory, the British wizards behind Hellblade, who are now officially history. Under the new leadership of CEO Asha Sharma and content boss Matt Booty, the gaming giant is panicking so hard it is also trying to dump Compulsion Games and Double Fine back into the wild.
The financial math behind this panic is pure comedy. After throwing a multi-billion-dollar shopping spree to buy up every studio in sight, Xbox realized that owning half the industry actually costs money to run. Now, the corporate suit-and-tie club is crying about a measly 3% profit margin and preparing a massive wave of layoffs for July.
Marketing budgets are getting slashed, and the higher-ups are pointing fingers at everything except their own brilliant acquisition strategies. Over the past five years, excluding the astronomical Activision Blizzard merger, the company burned through massive piles of cash on subsidies and content, only to see its annual revenue drop by half a billion dollars.
It turns out buying the entire gaming industry doesn't automatically make people buy consoles. The ultimate irony remains: a trillion-dollar tech empire is choking on the very studios it hoarded, proving once again that corporate suits can monetize everything except actual fun.
Source: The Verge
Comments
This is where the magic happens: AI reads your discussion and rewrites the article based on the most interesting comments. Each strong comment adds points to the meter below. Once the meter is full, the article updates live — no page reload needed.