The Bite of '26

[upbeat music] News.

This week in gaming news, Xbox is up to its usual shenanigans.

[laughs]

Xbox has laid off 268 employees, uh, which is roughly three-quarters of the way to their planned 3,200 job cuts as part of their studio reorganizations.

This is on top of the last round of job cuts in June, which affected 1,600 people.

These employees are from Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer, as announced in a message from ex- uh, Xbox Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty.

These layoffs have affected World's Edge Studio, which is in charge of the Age of Empires franchise Half of the studio has been let go, and what remains has been folded into Activision.

And Microsoft has patented a new way of inflicting ads on you, known as contextually aware management of interactive software application access, which will suspend a user's interaction with the game.

In other words, Microsoft thinks that video games should have ad breaks, like TV-

Yay

... or YouTube.

[laughs]

And Xbox CEO Satya Nadella has said that despite rumors, Xbox is not for sale.

All right.

Let's talk about something a bit nicer.

Rio, tell us about Dressmaker.

Gladly.

So Dressmaker was released on the 21st of September.

After game had some trouble finding a publisher due to its niche appeal, but now it's been a great success story, 'cause it's sitting at over 35,000 players at an all-time peak and overwhelmingly positive at over 5,000 reviews.

So this was a game made by Jonathan Hui Yun and conceived as a personal project, uh, 'cause his partner was also a dressmaker, and he kinda wanted to make something from something his partner was really good at.

And at first, the game was struggling to get a publisher, but after some social media people elevated the demo, they were able to convince, uh, persuade Free Lives to approve the development for the completed version.

And in doing so, I think created Cozy Lives, which is a small team within Free Lives, who are a studio who are known for games, uh, known as Gorn, Anger Foot, Broforce, [laughs] and Genital Jousting, so a very different vibe.

[laughs]

Yes.

They, um, they have quite a lineup.