Microsoft will lay off 1,600 people from its XBOX division while Xbox cloud gaming remains part of the company’s gaming push. The move lands alongside this year’s approval for 2,273 H-1B workers, sharpening questions about which jobs Microsoft is shrinking and which roles it still expects to hire.
Asha Sharma in San Francisco
Asha Sharma, the chief executive officer of XBOX, appeared at the Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, June 4, 2026. That appearance gives the cuts a public face inside the gaming business even as the company’s staffing plan points in the opposite direction.
4,800 Microsoft layoffs
Microsoft said it will lay off 4,800 people in total. The 1,600-person reduction inside XBOX is the largest division-specific figure in the notice. For employees, that means the gaming unit is taking a large share of the company-wide cut, not a small adjustment at the edges.
2,273 H-1B workers
This year, Microsoft was approved to hire 2,273 employer-sponsored, non-immigrant workers under the H-1B visa program. Microsoft is the sixth-largest beneficiary of H-1B visas. The comparison is blunt: Microsoft is cutting 1,600 Xbox jobs while the company has also been approved to bring in 2,273 H-1B workers this year.
The H-1B visa program is overwhelmingly dominated by workers from India. Critics have used that fact to argue that American jobs are being replaced to cut labor costs, and the timing has made Microsoft’s gaming cuts an easy target for that argument.
A federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration's $100,000 H-1B visa fee. The judge said the fee was an unauthorized tax without congressional approval, and the policy had raised the charge from $2,000-$5,000 to $100,000. The White House plans to appeal the ruling, which keeps the policy fight active while Microsoft’s own staffing move plays out.
Fans watching Xbox cloud gaming now have a clearer question than a corporate slogan can answer: how many of the approved H-1B workers, if any, will end up in Microsoft’s gaming operations.
