The games industry has weathered the bad economy for quite a bit now, and while games are still selling well the past few months have shown that developers and publishers a like are bracing for the inevitable impact. A few weeks back Sony announced big layoffs, as did EA, various developers have merged or shut down, and now Microsoft announced that it will be laying off 17% of its workforce, a total of 15,000 employees will get the pink slip in the new year.