With today’s confirmed mass layoffs across Microsoft, details of the teams and games at Xbox that have been affected have started to emerge. One studio closure has taken place, but a number of long in development projects have been cancelled and their associated teams have been cut.
The job cuts affect Perfect Dark developer The Initiative, which is being shutdown, the Everwild team at Rare, Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10, and an MMORPG which had been an unannounced development at ZeniMax Online Studios since 2018, codenamed Blackbird.
In a public acknowledgment, Microsoft Studios’ Matt Booty said:
“We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio.
“As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative. These decisions, along with other changes across our teams, reflect a broader effort to adjust priorities and focus resources to set up our teams for greater success within a changing industry landscape. We did not make these choices lightly, as each project and team represent years of effort, imagination, and commitment.”
Job cuts are being made across the board at Microsoft, with a bit under 4% of the global workforce affected, and with roles being cut at any level and at any tenure and seniority. There are reports of layoffs from Halo Studios, from across the network of Call of Duty studios, and roughly half of Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10’s team is being let go.
However, we are seeing some more targeted job losses as the company ends production on some games that have spent a long time in development and have leaked reports about development trouble. Perfect Dark was in development at The Initiative, but the studio needed to bring in Crystal Dynamics to help co-develop the game, and there were then swirling reports about the game’s troubled development before the gameplay reveal last June. That looked encouraging, but alas, no more.
Everwild was announced by Rare in 2019, but after a trailer followed in 2020, precious little has been heard of the game since then, but there have been reports of development difficulties as the project lacked focus and clear gameplay direction.
These are the most high profile cancellations, as they are of publicly announced games, but other projects have also been cancelled that were not public.
While there’s obviously reports emerging of what has been lost, there’s also reports of what is safe. Any game featured during the most recent Xbox Showcase is unaffected, and games like Fable, State of Decay 3 and others are also largely unaffected – even if the studios may be undergoing some layoffs still.
While some of the game cancellations are understandable, that it’s all being wrapped up in a rushed bundle of layoffs all at once – there’s reports of ZeniMax employees just being kicked off Slack – with a percentage target just makes it feel callous. Microsoft will obviously supply everyone affected with severance packages, and they have also promised that outgoing employees can gain priority viewing on jobs elsewhere within Microsoft, but little consolation. Our thoughts go out to anyone affected by these layoffs.
