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It will appear that an Xbox spokesperson is attempting damage control at the same time as as much as over 1,000 staff could possibly be facing layoffs. Over the previous couple of days, announcements and rumors regarding studio closures have circulated amongst Xbox’s gaming partners, thus producing a growing dark cloud over Microsoft’s gaming division. Xbox is starting to resemble 90s-era FOX television within the sense that irrespective of how much praise you get from peers or fans, nobody is secure from losing their job.
Chatting with Bloomberg (via VGC), Microsoft has said, “We’re not reducing our overall investment in games. We expect to take a position concerning the same in content as we did last yr. What’s changing is where we’re investing and the sorts of projects we’re backing.”
This statement probably holds little comfort for individuals who’ve already been told they aren’t any longer employed. It was just yesterday that The Verge reported on Dishonored series developer Arkane Studios’ closure. Arkane had been working on a game based on Marvel’s day-walking vampire hunter, Blade, but that’s now officially dead on the table. Meanwhile, IO Interactive has said it has ended its partnership with an undisclosed partner believed to be Microsoft regarding a title called Project Fantasy, which had originally been announced as an Xbox exclusive in 2023. The Hitman/007 developer has said it can try and develop Project Fantasy but is now in search of other funding resources to publish it.
Other studios that could possibly be on the chopping block include Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Double Fantastic, and more. Despite this, Xbox is claiming it remains to be committed to investing in games, but in some unspecified time in the future, one wonders in what form or fashion that will probably be when only a small handful of studios remain partnered with it. Unionized Xbox staff are making their voices heard (via Kotaku), stating they “We’re done paying for executive failures,” and is not going to be treated as disposable at the same time as internal layoffs are expected in the approaching days and weeks. Amongst all this chaos, it has been discovered that the top of Xbox Games Studios, Craig Duncan, has resigned.