Microsoft has let go a staggering 9,000 people in its latest round of layoffs, which also affected the people at Xbox and its various gaming subsidiaries.
On top of the huge number of people losing their jobs, major games have also been cancelled. As reported by Windows Central, a memo by Xbox Games Studio head Matt Booty posted through internal email has confirmed The Initiative’s Perfect Dark and Rare’s Everwild have been cancelled.
The Initiative will also be closed down in its entirely, failing to ship a video game since inception.
At one point, Perfect Dark was billed as a “AAAA game”, a quadruple game. A teaser of the game was Xbox’s “one more thing” announcement in a previous Xbox Showcase. A gameplay demo emerged recently, showing off the first-person stealth-action shooter, co-developed by Crystal Dynamics. And the revival of Rare’s follow-up to the GoldenEye 007, the game that revolutionised FPS on consoles before the arrival of Halo, is cancelled.
Rare’s next game, Everwild, only had one teaser going for it. But it looks like Rare will still be making Sea Of Thieves content now that their next game got the axe.
The Windows Central report also cited ZeniMax Online’s new MMORPG has been cancelled as well. The team will likely continue to focus on The Elder Scrolls Online.
Developer teams which showcased games at the most recent Xbox Showcase are deemed “safe”, which saw Grounded 2 (Obsidian), Clockwork Revolution (inXile Entertainment) and more being part of the show. State Of Decay 3, which had various teases but not much gameplay seen, is still in development.
Turn 10 lost 50% of its total staff. The sim racing developer’s latest game, simply dubbed Forza Motorsport, didn’t lived up to most of the racing game community’s expectations, though it has seen improvements through monthly content updates since its launch back in 2023.
Xbox’s current strategy of being a 3rd-party publisher as well as still making consoles has left onlookers baffled. One founding Xbox member even expressed that the brand is that with this move away from being a pure 1st-party console maker and games publisher. Though we reckon what will ultimate kill the brand is the instability of jobs and the revolving door of talents coming in and out.
This is the games publisher that closed down their one-and-only Japan-based studio that recently won awards with its latest release and sold its IP off despite decades of struggles in gaining a market share in Asia. This is also the one console maker not making their main console officially available in most of Southeast Asia now that Nintendo has increased their official support.