In announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs across the Xbox division yesterday, CEO Asha Sharma focused on discussing cuts to the Xbox platform team and redundant layers of middle management. Now, though, word is filtering out about significant staffing cuts at remaining Microsoft-owned game developers including id Software and Bethesda.

Apogee and 3D Realms founder Scott Miller—who helped publish some of id's earliest games—wrote on social media yesterday of "insider reports" that a majority of id had been laid off, "including most (if not all) coders." And last night, veteran programmer Michael Maynard—whose credits at id Software date back to 2011's Rage—wrote on LinkedIn that he was among the "roughly 50%" of the id team that was let go Monday.

Game Developer cites "multiple anonymous sources" in confirming those reports, saying the redundancies amount to about 90 employees at the Doom studio. The first DLC pack for last year's Doom: The Dark Ages launched earlier today.

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On Monday, Nintendo announced that it will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next February. That decision comes in response to European regulations that will soon require easily replaceable batteries in most consumer electronics. Rather than redesigning multiple original Switch models to comply with that regulation (as it is doing with the Switch 2), Nintendo has decided it will just stop selling the older console in the region.

Those new battery rules won't affect the availability of the Switch outside of Europe, of course. But the move got us wondering how much longer Nintendo might keep selling the 9-year-old Switch now that the Switch 2 is drawing the focus of both the company and the market.

An Ars analysis of Nintendo's recent history (as documented in its annual earnings releases) shows that sales for even the company's bestselling hardware tend to decline to zero after nine years on the market. But the data also shows the Switch being a relatively resilient market force that could sustain its commercial life well into its second decade on the market.

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