“Thrown Away for Profit”: EA Japan Blasts Microsoft Over Layoffs and AI Push

The gaming industry is going through one of its roughest moments. On July 2, Microsoft fired 9,000 people, cutting deep into its workforce.

While the company says not all of them came from the Xbox division, it’s clear the gaming side took a big hit. Popular studios were shut down, long-awaited games were canceled, and experienced developers suddenly found themselves out of work. The reaction online was quick and emotional, especially from those inside the industry.

Sean Noguchi, the President of EA Japan, was one of the first high-profile figures to speak out. Posting on X, he didn’t hold back his feelings. In a long message written in Japanese, Noguchi criticized the way companies like Microsoft make huge investments and then pull out before giving projects enough time to grow. He said this constant focus on pleasing shareholders leads to rushed decisions that hurt everyone else.

「リストラ（Restructure）」という言葉には、再構築や効率化といった前向きな意味合いが込められることが多く海外では比較的曖昧に使われがちです。しかし日本においては「リストラ＝解雇」として非常にストレートに受け止められその影響の大きさがより強く意識されます。… https://t.co/jYFwnpuehe

— 野口ショーン (@SeptillionGames) July 4, 2025

“In recent years, foreign-affiliated companies have become more inclined to seek short-term results from large-scale investments,” he wrote. “There are many cases where they change direction to meet shareholders’ expectations before enough time has passed. We believe this incident is a result of such a structure.”

Noguchi said the word “restructuring” might sound nicer in the West, but in Japan, people know it just means layoffs. And in this case, the cost was high, both for the developers and for gamers.

“What supports the game industry are the creators and staff who have been working sincerely on development,” he said. “As someone in the same industry, I feel a deep sense of pain from this decision. The regret that something built over a long period of time will not be released to the world, and the reality that gamers who were looking forward to it will never even have the chance to experience it.”

His message struck a nerve. Developers across social media shared stories of years of work gone in an instant. One anonymous Xbox developer told Engadget that the internal messaging from leadership made things worse. “I’m personally super pissed that Phil’s email to us bragged about how this was the most profitable year ever for Xbox in the same breath as pulling the lever,” they said. “It’s hard to feel proud about that.”

The damage is clear. Studios like The Initiative, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, and Tango Gameworks are now gone. Games like Perfect Dark and Everwild have been canceled. Teams at Rare, Turn 10, ZeniMax Online, and Blizzard were hit hard. Blizzard is even shutting down Warcraft Rumble. Veteran leaders like Matt Firor from ZeniMax and Gregg Mayles from Rare have left after decades of work. In Washington state alone, 830 workers lost their jobs.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is putting more energy into artificial intelligence. At Meta’s Llamacon event in April, CEO Satya Nadella said that 30% of Microsoft’s code is now written by AI. Activision has confirmed it’s using AI in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Inside Xbox, developers say they’ve been pushed to rely on tools like Copilot whether they want to or not. One told Engadget, “They’re trying their damndest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents.”

All of this is happening while Microsoft continues to report strong financial numbers. In the first quarter of 2025, it made $25.8 billion. Xbox content and services alone saw an 8% increase. But behind the big earnings are lost dreams, broken teams, and games that will never be played.

For many, this moment feels like a warning, that the heart of the gaming world is being traded for algorithms and stock prices. As Sean Noguchi said, this isn’t just business. These are people’s lives, and the industry they built is being torn down without a second thought.

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