Xbox Was Worse Than We Thought - WAN Show July 10, 2026

**Linus Sebastian** (0:00)
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, they've got answers.

**Luke Lafreniere** (0:05)
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru? Lima.

**Linus Sebastian** (0:09)
How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish?

**Luke Lafreniere** (0:12)
Dónde está el baño?

**Linus Sebastian** (0:14)
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

**Luke Lafreniere** (0:17)
Technically no. Spiritually, yes.

**Linus Sebastian** (0:20)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life? That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?
Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses. What's up everyone and welcome to The WAN Show. We have a great show lined up for you guys today. The big news this week is of course, the massive restructuring going on at Xbox. It was rumored and now it has happened. And I gotta admit, I'm probably gonna get myself into trouble with this topic because I've got a bit of a controversial take on it.
In other news, oh man, Steam might need to do something about their refund policy. And I mean, oh man, I'm gonna get myself in trouble with this one too. Maybe make it worse because the way that it is right now is harming indie devs in a way that I gotta admit, I didn't see coming. What else we got going on this week?

**Luke Lafreniere** (1:20)
Well, the most important news of the week above the Microsoft stuff is that Hanna Montana Linux has a modern remaster nearly two decades later.

**Linus Sebastian** (1:28)
Really, you went with that?

**Luke Lafreniere** (1:29)
So we can use that now.

**Linus Sebastian** (1:31)
Classic loot.

**Luke Lafreniere** (1:31)
That's good. That's very good.

**Linus Sebastian** (1:33)
Classic loot.

**Luke Lafreniere** (1:34)
Also, I don't know, man. Why not this? GOG Joint CEO says that the future of gaming shouldn't come at the expense of ownership.

**Dan** (1:43)
Yeah.

**Linus Sebastian** (1:43)
Yeah.

**Dan** (1:44)
Yeah.

**Linus Sebastian** (1:44)
That's pretty cool.

**Dan** (1:46)
Yeah.

**Linus Sebastian** (2:05)
The show is brought to you today by Squarespace, MSI, Toshiba and MotionGrey, alongside our rap partner, G-brand, our laptop partner, Razer, and our... And our...
And our chair partner, Razer. All right, before we jump into the Microsoft topic, we should probably explain what's going on here. Times are tough. Times are tough in bandwidth.

**Luke Lafreniere** (2:40)
It's been a hard...

**Linus Sebastian** (2:41)
And compute especially are getting...

**Luke Lafreniere** (2:43)
It's been a hard year.

**Linus Sebastian** (2:44)
Are getting expensive. So, Luke had the brilliant idea... Was it you?

**Luke Lafreniere** (2:49)
I don't know.

**Linus Sebastian** (2:51)
Someone, someone on set, let's blame Dan, had the brilliant idea of saving some bandwidth on streaming on Float Plane for The WAN Show.

**Luke Lafreniere** (3:01)
I think it was you and Dan.

**Linus Sebastian** (3:03)
By reducing the amount of movement in the frame. So, Dan came up with the innovative idea of shooting, oh no, I think the plate was me. Creating a plate.

**Luke Lafreniere** (3:17)
Pretty sure the plate was you. I think Dan brought up the idea of just reducing.

**Linus Sebastian** (3:21)
Right, right, right.

**Luke Lafreniere** (3:21)
By not moving, we saved money.

**Linus Sebastian** (3:23)
Yeah, so we shot a plate of the set, and then Luke and I just have our heads poking up through it. So, I don't know if we're gonna do this the whole time, but we could, can you look at the stats and see how much less bandwidth we use like this? Do you think it's significant?

**Luke Lafreniere** (3:39)
No, I can't right now.

**Linus Sebastian** (3:40)
Okay, well, someone's gonna have to look at it.

**Luke Lafreniere** (3:43)
Someone might be able to.

**Linus Sebastian** (3:44)
Unique username says it was, in fact, Dan. Nice, solid.
Anyhow, why don't we jump right into our first topic of the day. Xbox has hit a giant reset button, plans a massive corporate restructure, cutting 20% of the workforce and offloading 5, yes, 5 studios. They've announced 3200 role eliminations. So 1600, when it was announced, 1600 by end of year on top of 1600 others across Microsoft's workforce. And the aim here is shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects in the case of Xbox, like Halo, Minecraft, and The Elder Scrolls.
In an open letter written by Asha Sharma, Xbox apparently grew their business too fast during COVID, making teams 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation.

**Luke Lafreniere** (4:44)
In any such cases.

**Linus Sebastian** (4:45)
With up to 14 layers of management for decisions. Now, they're cutting back as margins are 3 to 10 times lower than the competition, and Big Green has lost 64 cents for every dollar they invested.