Technology and gaming giant Microsoft delivered some somber news this past week, laying off 35 staff in the Vancouver area. Those employees had been working on the development of two games, Microsoft Flight and Project Columbia.
The halted projects come on the heels of Microsoft posting their very first quarterly loss as a public company. According to sources within the company, the cancelled projects came by way of a deep analysis of the gaming portfolio and the various projects there within.
Vancouver residents in the gaming workforce have experienced other job losses over the past few months, with Rockstar Games and Radical Entertainment cutting jobs due to lack of business as well as a lack of tax incentives offered in other provinces. Rockstar Games for example, amalgamated their staff in Toronto in order to take advantage of said benefits.
Microsoft, whose gaming division are based entirely around the Xbox 360 consoled system, which is experiencing a relative period of uncertainty as more and more gaming takes place on mobile platforms than ever before. The main advantage of mobile gaming is the cost effectiveness of open source development as well as the ability to sell games easily and efficiently. Consoled games and their development on the other hand require a great deal of initial investment in capital and hardware that can add up quickly.
According to B.C. Tourism and Innovation Minister Pat Bell, the province does not believe that tax incentives is the way to secure long term business that is both successful and sustainable. The hope it seems, is that developers who are pushing mobile gaming will begin to pop up and employ tech savvy Vancouverites.
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