US senator Bernie Sanders is famous as not-exactly-a-friend of powerful corporations: He’s previously called for OpenAI to be broken up, for instance, and earlier this year announced a bill that would pause the construction of data centers in the US, to give lawmakers a chance to catch up with, and regulate, AI companies.
But AI isn’t Sanders’ only PC-centric bugaboo: He’s also pretty pissed off about the Xbox situation.
“Last year, Microsoft made $101 billion in profits, got a $12.5 billion tax break from Trump and paid its CEO $96 million,” Sanders blasted out on X, not long after the announcement of sweeping layoffs at Xbox.
“This year, it’s raising the price of an Xbox by $150 and eliminating 3,200 jobs. Please don’t tell me corporate tax breaks create jobs. It never trickles down.”
The concern is clearly more about the deeply unfair and unhealthy oligarchy we’re living in, and not how much Sanders has to pay for the next Xbox, but I find it interesting that the relatively mundane dealings of a game company are enough to attract the attention of such a high-profile politician.
Of course, this isn’t ol’ Bernardo’s first bit of Xbox-related criticism: In 2022, he joined with fellow senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Sheldon Whitehouse in calling out Bobby Kotick’s golden parachute following Activision Blizzard’s acquisition by Microsoft.
That, sadly, might lead to a certain amount of cynicism about what Sanders and other lawmakers can actually do here, aside from posting about it. The US Federal Trade Commission actively opposed Activision Blizzard’s buyout, but its efforts to halt the deal, or even just pause it while legal challenges worked their way through the system, were repeatedly thwarted. Former FTC chair Lina Khan, who headed up the agency during the acquisition, pointed out in 2025 that Microsoft’s actions since the merger are pretty much exactly what she tried to warn everyone about.
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