Microsoft and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced a massive overhaul for the gaming brand On Monday morning, with reports suggesting 1,600 roles had been cut immediately and a further 1,600 redundancies planned over the next 12 months. A total of 3,200 Xbox employees will be affected A total of 4,800 cuts hitting Microsoft.
These reductions come in full Xbox Game Studios The publishing wing, though some studios are more affected than others. In particular, compulsive games (South of midnight), Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Keeper, Kiln), Ninja Theory (Hell knifeSenua) and Undead Labs (Decay state 3) are all completely separate from Microsoft (although thankfully they are no closing and their finished projects will remain in development).
According to the report, another group of developers who have been hit particularly hard by the cuts are companies. Bethesda and ZeniMaxknown for his work in legendary franchises such as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Wolfensteinand Earthquake.
According to Jason Schreier BloombergZeniMax/Bethesda As a result of these cuts, it will “face a significant overhaul” and be forced to focus on the aforementioned IPs that stand as “the biggest franchises.” It’s remarkable that it won’t only Working on Fallout and The Elder Scrolls though as I’ve noticed a lot of rumors lately that might be the case.
Many of these rumors stemmed from a so-called report Sharma wants Xbox to “move faster” with its core franchiseIt is directly named along with Fallout and The Elder Scrolls Hello.
“ZeniMax will be significantly affected by the reorganization, but will not be reduced to just Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, despite what has been rumored over the past few weeks,” Schreier said. he wrote In a post on Bluesky. “The publisher will still be working on it WolfensteinThe Tribulation and the Earthquake.”
It should be noted that the fate of ZeniMax team Arkane Lyon is unknown. Arkane develops Marvel’s Blade reportedly delayed and “over budget”. We previously reported that Microsoft was in talks with the French government to find a way forward for the studio and avoid a shutdown while hopefully keeping the game alive, but that’s all we know for now.
In 2024 Microsoft and Xbox shut down ZeniMax/Bethesda developers Arkane Austin (Prey, Redfall), Alpha Dog Games (Mighty Doom) and Tango Gameworks (Ghostwire: Tokyo, Hi-Fi Rush), with PUBG Crafton the latter steps in to save the studio from the ax.
I’m glad that ZeniMax/Bethesda will still be able to explore new projects for their big properties outside of behemoth franchises like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, although the situation with Arkane and layoffs in general is still very sad. Developers who have worked together on these teams for years and years are released even further A devastating number of video games 2022-2026 we have already seen.
Note that The Elder Scrolls Online’s content roadmap is ‘changing’ due to layoffs at ZeniMax Online Studios. Bethesda Game Studios, meanwhile, Keeps all focus on The Elder Scrolls 6 as far as we know it is still “far away”.
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