I worked at Turn 10 (the Xbox studio which makes Forza) about a year and a half ago. Work life balance was amazing. The tech director of the studio made it a huge point that staff get adequate time off. He brought it up in almost every dev team meeting, "Let me know if you don't feel like you can take time off". He also made a huge point about having a sustainable team.

I don't know that this is a characteristic of all Microsoft studios. Departments in Microsoft can almost be like little companies all of their own. It _did_ leave a positive impression on me though and I can see myself working at Microsoft again in the future.

I left on good terms to see what it was like to work at startups.