268 more roles are being eliminated across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer. Combined with the studio divestitures completed since July, Chief Content Officer Matt Booty says the organization is roughly three-quarters of the way through the restructuring announced earlier this year. The gaming industry has been hemorrhaging jobs at a pace that should be generating significantly more outrage than it is, and Xbox has been one of the most consistent contributors to that ongoing crisis, unsurprisingly.
All of this comes from an internal email Booty sent out to Xbox staff which was then turned into a public facing blog post on Xbox.com.
Activision, the publisher behind Call of Duty, is now taking over development of the next Halo title through a new purpose-built team that Booty describes as separate from Call of Duty development. A small remaining team at Halo Studios will continue supporting the games currently in-market and the existing community. The studio that was built specifically to carry the Halo franchise forward is being sidelined in favor of the publisher Microsoft acquired for 69 billion dollars, and the people who have dedicated careers to one of gaming’s most iconic franchises are watching it get handed off in a reorganization email. Activision is also absorbing World’s Edge and Rare into its expanded remit, meaning the studio responsible for Sea of Thieves and a historic Nintendo legacy is now operating under the same roof as Call of Duty.
The rest of the reorganization moves are significant in their own right. Bethesda is absorbing Obsidian, which will continue working on Grounded and the new Fallout project being built in collaboration with Bethesda Game Studios. Playground Games and Turn 10 are being merged into a single studio focused on the Forza and Fable franchises, and King is taking over Microsoft Casual Games.
And then there is Ninja Theory, which is perhaps the part of all this that stings the most, maybe second only to Halo going to Activision. Two separate acquisition agreements for Ninja Studio fell through, and Xbox is now beginning formal consultation with employees on a proposed closure. The studio behind Hellblade and Senua’s Saga may simply cease to exist, and two separate attempts to find it a new home failed to produce a result. Undead Labs fared better, successfully transitioning to a new publisher on terms that include State of Decay 3 launching day one on Game Pass. Arkane’s situation remains unresolved with consultation expected to continue through the end of the year.
Booty closes the email by pointing to what he calls one of the strongest game lineups in Xbox history and scheduling an all-hands town hall for October 6th. The games may well be coming. The studios that were supposed to build the next decade of Xbox are being merged, handed off, or shut down in the process of getting there. If anyone was to assess the current state of Xbox, it would likely be described as anything but “strong”…
