According to a Bloomberg report, the layoffs are expected shortly after Microsoft’s fiscal year ends on June 30. While the number of affected employees has not been disclosed, the planned cuts are expected to go beyond staffing, with reductions also being considered across marketing and other operational budgets.

The restructuring will be the first major overhaul since Asha Sharma became chief executive of Xbox in February.

Sharma reportedly outlined the challenges facing the gaming business in an internal message to employees. She said Xbox’s accountability margin had fallen to just 3% despite the company spending more than $20 billion over the past five years on content, platforms and hardware subsidies. During the same period, annual revenue declined by almost $500 million.

The Xbox chief told staff the business would need to rebuild parts of its platform infrastructure and reassess its portfolio in the months ahead. Bloomberg reported that Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty have described the current period as an “Xbox Reset”, aimed at putting the division on a more sustainable path.

The planned changes come as Xbox works to overcome challenges across several parts of its business. Microsoft’s drive into subscription gaming and cloud services has not delivered the growth needed to offset weaker console sales.

At the same time, the company has faced complaints over a lack of major exclusive titles capable of driving hardware demand.

Growth in Game Pass subscriptions has also stalled. In April, Microsoft cut Game Pass prices and announced that future Call of Duty titles would no longer launch on the service on day one, marking one of the first major strategic changes under Sharma’s leadership.

The company is also dealing with high hardware costs. Reports say increasing component prices have significantly raised storage costs, creating additional pressure on Microsoft’s long-term console plans, including work linked to its next-generation gaming platform, codenamed Helix.

As part of the reset, Xbox is expected to place greater emphasis on its biggest gaming franchises, including Halo, Gears of War and Forza.

The company recently confirmed that upcoming titles such as Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will not launch on competing platforms including PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, while it focuses on strengthening the Xbox ecosystem.

Microsoft has not publicly commented on the reported layoffs.

These outages are common and usually last for hours, sometimes days, disrupting both productivity and leisure.

Home offices and gamers feel the impact more than most users because their work or play depends on steady, uninterrupted power.

Remote workers risk losing files, missing deadlines, or dropping out of meetings, while gamers deal with corrupted data, lost progress, and abrupt shutdowns during peak play time.

The poor state of Nigeria’s power distribution system has pushed many people to ask whether there is a reliable alternative.

One question that keeps coming up is whether solar power, a commendable renewable energy, has improved enough to handle needs, especially now that the technology is better and prices have dropped in recent years.

Why Power Issues Hit Gamers and Remote Workers Harder

Nigeria’s power problems do not affect everyone in the same way. For people working from home, an outage can mean a disrupted virtual meeting, unsaved work, or delayed delivery that hurts professional credibility.

This matters even more now that many Nigerians rely on remote and freelance jobs with international clients. These roles often pay better, but they also demand reliability. Poor power supply creates real risks to income and career growth.

Gamers face a different set of problems. Sudden power cuts can damage sensitive equipment like gaming PCs, consoles, and routers. Over time, these shutdowns can affect hardware lifespan and lead to data loss.

Both groups need clean and stable power, something fuel generators struggle to provide consistently. While generators were once the go-to backup option, rising fuel costs, noise, frequent maintenance, and fumes make them unsuitable for quiet home environments or long hours of use.

Solar Has Changed, Even If Many People Have Not Noticed

Solar power used to be seen as an expensive option that could only support basic lighting and fans. That picture is outdated. Modern solar systems now include more efficient panels, stronger inverters, and advanced batteries, including lithium-ion options that store energy for nighttime use or long outages.

Hybrid inverters can switch smoothly between solar, battery, and grid power. Many systems also allow users to monitor performance through mobile apps. With Nigeria’s strong sunlight, especially in the northern regions, these upgrades make solar useful beyond basic household needs.

Solar systems can now support computers, monitors, and other power-hungry devices. In many cases, users recover their investment within three to five years through reduced grid bills and lower generator fuel costs.

What Solar Systems Can Actually Handle

A modest solar setup can comfortably power essential home office equipment at the same time. This includes a laptop, one or two monitors, a router, and a fan, with total usage of about 150 to 300 watts. With a system of 1 to 3 kW and battery storage, this setup can run for several hours during outages.

Gaming setups vary more. Consoles like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox typically draw between 300 and 450 watts during heavy use, which mid-sized solar systems can handle.

High-end gaming PCs, however, can pull 300 to 500 watts or more, depending on the graphics card and processor.

Light or short gaming sessions are possible with smaller systems, but longer sessions or demanding setups require larger panel capacity, usually 3 to 5 kW, along with strong battery storage. Monitors also add to the load, though modern LED screens use far less power than older models.

In Nigeria, entry-level solar kits currently cost between ₦500,000 and ₦1.5 million, depending on size and components.

Is Solar the Fix or Just a Better Backup?

Compared with other alternatives to the national grid, solar power offers quiet, reliable energy without fuel worries. It keeps meetings running, devices powered, and games uninterrupted, especially in Nigeria’s sunny climate and as equipment prices continue to fall.

That said, solar is not always a full replacement. High power demands, such as heavy gaming rigs or multiple appliances running at once, may still require a hybrid setup or backup from the grid or generator during bad weather or peak usage.

For now, solar works best as a strong primary or backup option. It reduces dependence on unreliable grid power and costly generators while providing clean and steady energy for work and entertainment.

Solar is more than enough for most home offices and moderate gaming setups. For very high-end use, it performs best when combined with other power sources.

Ultimately, solar power has grown into a practical response to Nigeria’s electricity challenges, offering more stability and long-term savings than before.

The outage, which began around 16:00 UTC on October 29, was traced to an “inadvertent configuration change” that disrupted DNS routing and caused widespread latency, timeouts, and authentication failures across multiple systems.

The fallout was immediate and spread wide. Core Microsoft services, including Microsoft 365, Xbox, Minecraft, and Azure-dependent applications, were hit. 

Companies relying on Azure infrastructure, such as Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Starbucks, Costco, Kroger, and Capital One, also reported service disruptions that left customers unable to access websites, make payments, or check in for flights.

In a statement on Azure’s status page, Microsoft confirmed the root cause of the incident:

“Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC on 29 October 2025, customers and Microsoft services leveraging Azure Front Door (AFD) may have experienced latencies, timeouts, and errors. We have confirmed that an inadvertent configuration change was the trigger event for this issue.”

Azure Front Door (AFD), which powers global content delivery and accelerates applications, became the central point of failure. The outage rippled across a long list of Azure services, including App Service, Azure SQL Database, Azure Active Directory B2C, Microsoft Sentinel, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure Maps, and Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management.

By 7:40 PM ET, Microsoft said Azure Front Door had reached “above 98% availability” and that mitigation efforts were ongoing. “We are continuing to work on tail-end recovery for remaining impacted customers and services,” the company added, estimating full recovery by 00:40 UTC on October 30.

Gaming services were also affected. Xbox users experienced connection issues, with many needing to restart their consoles to reconnect. The Xbox Support account later confirmed services were “restored to their pre-incident state.”

Elsewhere, Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines acknowledged that the Azure outage disrupted key operational systems. “We are currently experiencing a disruption to key systems, including our websites,” Alaska Airlines said, urging passengers to visit airport counters for boarding passes.

Retail chains like Starbucks, Costco, and Kroger’s websites and mobile apps were temporarily inaccessible, while some Capital One customers reported difficulty accessing banking services. In the UK, internet provider Community Fibre confirmed that “some customers may have experienced issues due to the Microsoft outage.”

The disruption coincided with Microsoft’s quarterly earnings release, during which even its main website struggled to load properly. While the company managed to restore most services by late evening, the timing of the incident worried investors and analysts about the resilience of global cloud systems.

This outage follows a similar incident just a week earlier involving Amazon Web Services (AWS), which also led to widespread internet disruptions. Analysts warn that such back-to-back failures reveal the fragility of the world’s dependence on a few centralised cloud providers.

The company is working to streamline its operations following the $69 billion deal, which brought the company well-known gaming titles such as ‘Call of Duty’. 

The latest round of job cuts will primarily impact corporate and supporting roles within the Xbox division. In a memo to staff, Microsoft Gaming’s CEO, Phil Spencer, acknowledged the challenges of making such decisions but emphasised the need to reorganise the business to ensure long-term success. 

While these redundancies represent a big change, Spencer assured that no gaming projects, devices, or studios would be affected by cancellations or closures.

Spencer also confirmed that employees affected by the cuts in the United States would receive severance packages, healthcare extensions, and outplacement services, while those in other countries would be supported according to local labour laws. 

He reiterated that the restructuring is intended to align the company’s resources more efficiently to support growth in its gaming business.

The gaming sector has experienced huge job losses globally, with major companies like Sony and Unity also announcing cuts. 

Microsoft’s latest layoffs follow earlier ones in January when the company let go of 1,900 employees. In May, the company closed several studios, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, though it did not disclose the exact number of employees affected at that time.

The video game industry has been hit with challenges in recent years, worsened by a downturn in player spending post-pandemic. Research firms have even reduced their growth forecasts for the sector, due to underwhelming console sales and fewer major game releases this year.

Microsoft’s decision to shut down the ADC launched in 2022 came as a shock to the members of staff numbering not less than 50, according to an insider source.

While Microsoft has not issued an official statement, the management allegedly informed staff of the potential shutdown.

Affected employees might receive salaries until June and continue to have access to their health insurance.

“Microsoft ADC team is made up of, majorly, engineering and communications team. It is not the entire Microsoft [Nigeria] that is affected”, an insider source told Techeconomy.

“But, this came as a shock, because the Microsoft founder was in Nigeria recently and even promised to invest in some projects. So, the teams are, kind of, confused on what could have prompted the ‘sudden’ action. There wasn’t a kind of grapevine among the staff that something like this was going to happen. Maybe in the coming days the message will become clearer.

“However, a lot of tech companies have been laying off employees since the ‘AI war’ started”, the source said.

In another sign of Africa’s growing importance as a global hub for talent, Microsoft launched a $100 million Africa Development Centre (ADC) with offices in Kenya and Nigeria.

Aiming to recruit 100 full-time engineers by the end of the year, and 500 engineers by the end of 2023, Microsoft was betting on African innovation in fields like fintech, agritech and offgrid energy and hopes to tap into them.

Through ADC, Microsoft aimed to partner with local universities that will create curriculum designed for the next wave of digital skills, including data science, AI, mixed reality, and application development.

“There is panic in Kenya office too. There have been calls from the team. They want to know what is happening, but it is difficult to process the situation. Everyone has been moody since Monday the news filtered in”.

Microsoft Axes Four Studios

Not only ADC West Africa, Techeconomy gathered that Microsoft is axing four game studios, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, reportedly so it can focus on “high-impact titles.”

In fact, Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks confirmed the shutdowns in posts on Twitter/X.

Arkane Austin was perhaps best known for developing Redfall, a vampire-hunting online shooter that faced numerous negative reviews when it launched last year.

Tango Gameworks is behind Hi-Fi Rush, a well-received adventure title, along with the horror survival series The Evil Within and action title Ghostwire: Tokyo.

Microsoft acquired the studios after buying ZeniMax Media, the parent of Bethesda Game Studios, in 2020 for $7.5 billion.

IGN reports that Matt Booty, Xbox Game Studios head sent an email to staff, explaining that the cuts are “grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games.” Booty also noted that Microsoft is shutting down Alpha Dog Studios and Roundhouse Games.

“To double down on these franchises and invest to build new ones requires us to look across the business to identify the opportunities that are best positioned for success,” he wrote. “This reprioritization of titles and resources means a few teams will be realigned to others and that some of our colleagues will be leaving us.”

The shutdown of Arkane Austin means that some of its members will migrate to other Microsoft-owned studios.

Booty also said “Redfall’s previous update will be its last as we end all development on the game. The game and its servers will remain online for players to enjoy and we will provide make-good offers to players who purchased the Hero DLC,” which was never released.

But in other cases, it looks like Microsoft is laying off video game developers. “We will provide our full support to those who are impacted in today’s notifications and through their transitions, including severance benefits informed by local laws,” Booty added.

Microsoft is making the changes as Xbox sales struggles with some estimates projecting that Sony’s PlayStation 5 has been outselling the console by a 3-to-1 margin.

In January, Microsoft also laid off another 1,900 gaming jobs citing the need to create a “sustainable cost structure” for its gaming business.