Microsoft's gaming division is reportedly not done cutting. According to Rock Paper Shotgun, further rounds of layoffs are planned for this month, November, and January, continuing toward a reported total of 3,200 people cut across the year. Eurogamer carries the same schedule and ties it to what it describes as CEO Asha Sharma's plan to reset the business, with the first of the three waves landing as soon as this month.

Neither outlet cites an official Microsoft statement confirming the timeline, so this sits as a report rather than an announcement, however consistent the dates look across the two accounts. Xbox has already said more cuts were coming at some point this year, following two earlier rounds of mass layoffs, which is the kind of warning that reads less like caution and more like a release schedule.

A Service Getting Rebuilt Around What You'll Pay For

Alongside the layoff reports, Rock Paper Shotgun says an overhaul of Xbox Game Pass is in the works, one aimed at letting subscribers pick which parts of the service they actually want to pay for rather than taking the whole bundle. On paper, that is a pitch about choice: pay for what you use, skip what you don't.

Read against the same week's layoff reports, the choice being offered looks less like a gift and more like a finer set of levers. A subscription service that lets you unbundle is also a subscription service that can price each piece separately, which is a tidier way to extract more from the players willing to pay for specific slices than to keep selling one flat rate to everyone. Game Pass has always been a bet that volume beats margin. An overhaul built around granular payment is usually the moment a company decides it wants both.

The Count Keeps Climbing

What's confirmed across both reports is the shape of the calendar: three more waves, spread across three months, on top of two rounds already behind Xbox this year. What isn't confirmed is any detail beyond that shape, since Microsoft hasn't put its name to the figures or the dates itself.

Three further layoff rounds reportedly planned for this month, November, and January
Reported total headcount affected across the year said to reach roughly 3,200
A Game Pass restructure reportedly aimed at per-feature or per-tier payment options

None of that total is an abstraction to the people inside it. Somewhere between a reset plan and a subscription tier getting split into smaller, better-priced pieces, there are employees who already lived through two rounds this year and are now waiting to see which month has their name on it.