Are you talking about Romero Games, or worldwide 9000 people have lost jobs in game development studios?

Yeah things happen, also in other fields and professions. Here e.g. ISPs have been kicking lots of people out recently, it sucks yeah. And paper mills too earlier.

I checked on Wikipedia what games Romero Games has released and been working on, and:
1. I didn't recognize even one of them.
2. None of them are sold on GOG.

So I am unsure why I should care if Romero's home indie game development studio kicked the bucket. Oh well, maybe he will establish another game studio with two members and start working on SIGIL 3? Wheeee!

Ok so you referred mainly to the recent news of Microsoft laying off lots of people (according to that article 9000 people out of total over 200.000), quite a lot targeted to their console and gaming business I guess.

I have no idea how big "Romero Games" was ie. how many people lost their job with it. Either way, I didn't recognize any of their released or in-development games, and none of them are sold on GOG either, so...

I guess MS is starting to acknowledge that they are losing to Sony and Nintendo in the console business, and maybe overall their gaming division isn't as healthy and lucrative as they hoped. They are making much more money with Azure from big companies etc., better concentrate more there. Naturally keep PC Windows alive as well so that the general public will stay MS-aware and chained to Windows.

I admit I never understood the point of XBox, and why I'd want to buy one. It didn't seem much more than trying to get PC gamers into a controlled console gaming ecosystem controlled by MS. I did buy the first XBox console at some point for Halo 2 (which I ended up playing on PC instead, go figure) and to turn it into some kind of advanced media box with which I can watch DVD-movies and pirated DIVX movies on my TV, but meh, it remained unused all these years and just recently I finally threw it into recycling as I didn't even consider it remarkable piece of gaming history.

XBox always kinda seemed just something aimed for PC gamers who'd felt gaming PCs cost too much. Sony and Nintendo differ more from PC gaming to justify their existence (even if PS3-5 game library overlaps quite much with PC games ie. you can play many Sony console games on PC too, but with XBox it was even more, very little XBox exclusives not available for PC).

Just read another article how this was about streamlining the management segment, unoffical ofc

Interesting take, as a publisher Microsoft did some nice things tho. And i did get accustomed to having an XboX as another contender. It would be a shame in my eyes if the rest of the world would only be Playstation and Nintendo

True I guess... but then earlier it was only e.g. Nintendo vs Sega, then Sony vs Nintendo.

And there is always also PC gaming which still can compete with the consoles too, especially with handhelds like Steamdeck etc.

I think we will see many freshly founded indie developer studios in the upcoming months .

Partially.

Also, studios repeatedly failing to turn profit will eventually result in consequences

Other than that, one notable failure would be Gamepass. It's been operating at a loss pretty much since its inception and has been getting steadily worse and worse.

MS was hoping to make it into their golden goose and now, they are forced to start cutting costs.

And the other day Brenda Romero announced that they (only) had to lay off a bunch of people and were looking into other ways of funding their project, damn...

That's definitely that for BLACKROOM (which I backed in 2016) as well then(?).

Heard good things about Empire of Sin, here's hoping that the closure doesn't affect an eventual release on GOG.

https://x.com/romerogamesltd/status/1942307080301420682

"The funding for our project was pulled, and our game was canceled.

Due to confidentiality agreements, we cannot disclose the publisher's identity, though some may infer it from public information.

As a result, we now have to reassess the entire staffing of our studio.

Romero Games is not closed, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that it does not come to that. Any suggestion otherwise is factually incorrect. Indeed, we were in the studio today to discuss next steps with the team.

We've been contacted by several publishers interested in helping us bring the game across the finish line, and we're currently evaluating those opportunities."

Glad to hear they're not dead yet, thanks for sharing!