Xbox Makes First Game Pass Lineup Announcement Following Layoffs — and CEO Asha Sharma’s Admission That Microsoft’s Gaming Strategy Failed to Work Out

Microsoft has announced the July lineup of games for Game Pass in its first announcement following the layoffs that ripped through the Xbox business yesterday.

CEO Asha Sharma cut 1,600 staff from Xbox yesterday, with another 1,600 staff to go over the course of the next 12 months. Four studios have left Microsoft as part of the restructure, which Sharma called the “most significant in Xbox history.”

Explaining the cuts, Sharma admitted that Microsoft’s gaming strategy had failed, and a key part of that failure had to do with Game Pass. The Wall Street Journal said that Microsoft had expected Game Pass subscriptions to hit around 77 million this year, but it currently has only about 30 million. As revealed during the FTC vs Microsoft trial of 2023, Microsoft had hoped for 100 million subscribers by 2030, which seems very unlikely at this stage.