Gurman: as part of Vision Pro cuts, Apple is largely shutting down a team focused on gaming and reducing the size of a unit producing immersive video content
This cut lands at the end of a two-year retreat from Vision Pro's original ambitions. Apple had already sharply scaled back production of the headset in 2024 (sharply scaled back Vision Pro production), lost its founding executive when Dan Riccio departed and the team was folded under John Ternus, and earlier abandoned an in-house microLED display effort that was meant to feed future headsets (wound down its microLED display effort).
What changed today is that the retreat has moved from hardware volumes to software and content: alongside the roughly 100 Vision Pro positions in Apple's broader 200+ job cuts, the gaming team is being largely shut down and the immersive video unit shrunk, while the parallel Siri reductions signal the freed resources are being redirected toward AI and new devices.
First-order effects
Vision Pro loses its dedicated internal gaming and immersive-video champions, leaving the headset's content pipeline dependent on whatever third-party developers choose to invest without an Apple counterpart pushing the categories.
Roughly half of the 200+ announced cuts fall on the Vision Pro unit itself, compounding the earlier loss of Riccio's leadership and concentrating the remaining team under Ternus's hardware organization.
Second-order effects
Developers and studios that built visionOS games and immersive video against Apple's stated commitment now face a platform whose first-party content push is being dismantled, raising the risk calculus for any further visionOS-exclusive investment.
The simultaneous ~100-person Siri reduction frames both cuts as one reallocation: Apple is trading headset content staffing for AI and new-device work, forcing internal teams to compete for the same headcount pool.
Third-order effects
The pattern across the microLED wind-down, the production pullback, and now the content-team cuts suggests Apple treats speculative hardware ecosystems as reversible bets — funding them at launch, then cutting content and component investment quickly when adoption lags, which raises the bar for third parties betting on any first-generation Apple platform.
The trend: Apple is systematically pruning first-generation hardware bets — displays, headset production, and now headset content teams — to concentrate resources on AI and next devices.
Altogether, Apple is eliminating roughly 200 roles. Apple: “As we continue to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users, we are realigning some of our teams.” It adds laid off employees can apply for other roles at Apple.
Maybe an unpopular opinion: I never understood the focus on gaming with this current generation that was clearly not a good fit for it. And it totally makes sense that most Immersive Videos continues outside Apple. So overall pretty good news that they refocus. It's going to b…
Apple is making the Siri changes to adjust roles to better meet the needs of the new Siri AI architecture. Apple is making the Intelligence Systems Experience changes to speed up development of new AI features across products.
Apple is making the Vision Pro related changes to prioritize new types of devices and how people are using the current product, plus to seemingly cut costs. Immersive videos cost millions of dollars per episode to create, while the device hasn't resonated as a gaming machine.
BREAKING: Apple is largely eliminating its Vision Pro gaming team, scaling back its Vision Pro immersive video team and cutting jobs across both Siri and its Intelligence Systems Experience team in software engineering. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Apple is trying to have external creators/studios etc build the Immersive media ecosystem not Apple Internally. This doesn't signal anything about AVP as a product, they are treating the headset like the AppleTV device instead of Apple as an Immersive content studio