Another fall of the axe today: Xbox announced that, as part of its continued company-wide reset, it’s laying off 268 people. Most of those laid off, it says, are part of “Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer” — a quote which leaves open many possible interpretations of who lost their jobs at Xbox today.
As part of this restructuring, Matt Booty said that the company is folding together studios based on existing collaborations and perceived synergies. Activision Blizzard, for example, is taking over publishing the Halo franchise. Obsidian now falls under Bethesda’s remit, as the two were already working together on the new Fallout game. King absorbed Microsoft’s Casual Games division.
However, this is far from a rosy picture of the company’s state. Earlier this year, when the reset was first announced, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma stated that the company was looking at around 3,200 total layoffs. About 1,600 of those layoffs happened in July, and 268 lost their jobs today.
If that math maths the way it’s supposed to, then that means we could still have up to 1,400 layoffs coming to the Xbox staff. And after everything that’s happened, one has to wonder — who is even left to lay off at Xbox?
What does Xbox’s staff look like now?
First of all, it’s not clear whether the staff of Ninja Theory and Arkane are included in the list of layoffs today or in July. According to Xbox, multiple attempts to sell Ninja Theory have fallen through, and Arkane is already in a lengthy consultation process. At this point, the company appears resigned to the closure of both studios, but it’s possible they’re not counting the employees as layoffs until it comes down to it.
Second, Booty’s definition of today’s layoffs as being at “other first-party studios” has since revealed itself to be something of an understatement. Many employees of studios outside of Halo Studios are coming forward to report their own layoffs. Juan Vaca, the story director behind the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day, reported on LinkedIn that he’d been laid off only a short time before the game’s release.
Even within the knitting-together of existing studios, some workers are being let go. Rumors on Resetera have it that half of the World’s Edge team, the studio behind Age of Empires, have been let go, though we’ve not yet been able to confirm that. The studio as a whole is now under the control of Activision Blizzard. Similarly, rumor has it that the staff at Halo Studios has been whittled down to just a support team for the existing Halo titles.
So who’s left? Activision Blizzard, King, and Bethesda are all of the major entities, with only a few studios falling outside of their remit. Playground Games, the studio behind the upcoming Fable title, has merged with Forza developer Turn 10, a formal joining of their long-time partnership according to Xbox.
It’s not clear how many people are still working at The Coalition, but that studio will probably remain at least somewhat intact until after Gears of War: E-Day launches (though Vaca’s dismissal would seem to indicate Microsoft might not be willing to wait for that). InXile also remains, where it was working on Clockwork Revolution at last report. There’s also the Xbox publishing division, which recently touted it had taken on Kojima Production’s OD and Physint.
In her original Reset manifesto, Sharma said that the studio planned to complete these layoffs before the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in mid-2027. Playground’s Fable game is scheduled to launch on February 23, meaning there are several months between then and the end of the fiscal year where Microsoft could undertake some ruthless calculus on its staff. At present, there’s no way to know for sure.