微软游戏部门裁员30%并将重组

Yesterday Microsoft announced that its Entertainment and Devices Division (EDD) saw sales increase slightly as the company sold through a record six million Xbox 360s during its holiday quarter. Profits were down, however, and the 1,400 immediate job cuts (out of a planned 5,000 at Microsoft) may have hit EDD pretty hard, according to ZDNet, which claims that the "bulk" of these cuts was on EDD.

The division houses the Zune, Windows Mobile and PC gaming businesses in addition to Xbox. It's unclear to what extent Xbox specifically will be affected or how the cuts might affect product development. That said, the Gamerscore blog has ceased operations and multiple members of the blog have confirmed (via Twitter) that they'd been laid off.

Additionally, Gamasutra has learned that a large portion of the staff at ACES Studio, which develops the Flight Simulator franchise, has been axed. The studio was also working on Microsoft Train Simulator 2 and was responsible for Microsoft ESP, a unique "visual simulation platform" based on Flight Simulator X technology. The future of these product lines remains up in the air.

Update: Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat has word that 30 percent of Microsoft's video game testers have been cut. And the veteran journalist states that next week the game group is expected to undergo a management restructuring. What this means for Shane Kim, Phil Spencer, Don Mattrick and others we don't yet know, but we'll be sure to bring you the news as it happens.

黑软到新闻一般是先发再看。