Asha Sharma, who runs Xbox Game Studios, confirmed this week that no announced game is canceled, even as Microsoft cuts 3,200 jobs. The code ships. The people who wrote it do not. Fine.
Xbox cloud streaming pulls roughly 115 watts per active session at the datacenter, before cooling. Multiply by the 25 million Game Pass subscribers Phil Spencer keeps bragging about, assume a modest three-hour daily session, and you get 3.14 terawatt-hours a year. I did the arithmetic. That is a mid-size country rendering a dragon.
The layoffs do not reduce this by one joule. The render farms hum whether Compulsion Games — the Montreal studio behind that grey 1960s dystopia game — has staff or not.
Phil Spencer flew private to three separate gaming award shows in 2023. The servers do not miss anyone.
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Based on the original article "Xbox to Cut Up to 3,200 Staffers, About 20% of Headcount, in 'Most Significant Restructure' in Company's History".
