Mass layoffs at Xbox are only making it harder to meet Microsoft's still-steep expectations amid management chaos, according to one of the id Software employees who escaped the studio's own wave of redundancies.

Speaking with Aftermath, this anonymous id employee reportedly says "things are still very chaotic" as Xbox works to finish the "reset" plan that CEO Asha Sharma described as essential for the health of the business.

3,200 jobs will be eliminated for the sake of the plan, and after the latest cuts, Xbox creative lead Matt Booty estimates the company is 75% of the way through it. This has doomed countless Xbox devs to walk on eggshells until the other shoe eventually drops.

"While there has been an attempt to communicate to the studios, it is still entirely in bullshit corporate speak," says the id employee. "I still don't believe they have a clear vision for the future. The only concrete thing they have communicated is they want higher profits, and they want it now."

Previously, it was reported that Microsoft's notoriously high profit expectations had left Xbox with an ultimatum. Assessing the Xbox business, Sharma said in June that "our business today is not healthy" and spoke negatively of margins that were 3 to 10 times lower than "comparable platform and publishing businesses."

It sounds like Microsoft is still teeing up moonshot margins. This id employee continues: "Aggressive goals are being set that would have been unrealistic even before the layoffs. ... To say the workers within Xbox have a dim view of the future is putting it mildly. We keep thinking morale can't sink lower but the obvious incompetence of Xbox management somehow keeps driving it down worse."

Among many conflicts in Xbox's plan, an understated one is the simple fact that laying off devs directly opposes the goal of releasing more and better games, something Microsoft has struggled to do for many years.

It's not just that Xbox teams will be down talent and manpower – even the sterling Elder Scrolls team is bleeding invaluable seniority – or saddled with overseeing studios which they've been forced to absorb. Creatives rightly fearing for their jobs under notoriously closure-happy leadership will struggle to make good games simply because fear, doubt, confusion, and uncertainty are demonstrably terrible for morale, motivation, and mental health.

As late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in 2013: "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."

Japanese companies like Nintendo, Capcom, and Konami are healthier because they have smaller teams, don't have frequent layoffs, and don't pay executives $30 million, says expert.

Storied RPG studio Obsidian is now a part of Bethesda. That news came alongside Xbox's latest round of layoffs and reshuffling, and it's not entirely clear what it means for the studio's future. Apparently, it'll be little more than "a change in reporting structure" – according to a leaked memo from Bethesda president Jill Braff, anyway.

"The creative identity and strengths that make Obsidian distinct will remain at the core of their studio and work," Braff says in an email to employees, obtained by Aftermath. "[CEO] Feargus [Urquhart] and the Obsidian leadership team will continue to lead Obsidian, with the studio reporting to me. Bethesda Game Studios will continue to lead the Fallout franchise."

Earlier this year, Bethesda and Obsidian announced that they were collaborating on a new Fallout game, 16 years after the two studios worked together on the beloved Fallout: New Vegas. That project became official shortly after behind-the-scenes reporting suggested that Microsoft had swooped in to kill Obsidian's Avowed sequel and put the devs to work on Fallout.

"Together, the teams will build on their longstanding relationship and the early work already underway on a new Fallout project, with more to share in the months ahead," Braff says in the leaked message. "This structure supports the franchise-led model we've been strengthening while keeping accountability for both the studio and the franchise clear."

For much of the past decade, Obsidian has put its resources into developing original IP, including The Outer Worlds, Grounded, and Pentiment, as well as a fresh take on its Pillars of Eternity series in Avowed.

While I love New Vegas as much as anyone, and a new Fallout game is long overdue, I have a hard time restraining my cynicism over Obsidian's future. The studio was clearly passionate about its own, internal IP, and this talk of "franchise-led" development feels all too familiar. We have, after all, spent years watching studios like Ubisoft and Activision slowly turn their vast rosters of internal studios into little more than support houses for big franchises like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty.

Baldur's Gate 3 publishing lead Michael "Cromwelp" Douse shares those concerns about Obsidian. "I can't imagine what it must feel like to have independent agency and then, suddenly enough, find yourself working *under* a competitor," he writes. "I can't imagine that feels great." Especially with reports of 25% of the studio being laid off as part of the transition.

Another Fallout RPG was in development at Obsidian Entertainment before Bethesda pulled the plug "a while ago," ex-studio lead says.

By the time StarCraft launches in 2030, it will have been nearly 15 years since developer Blizzard released a new game in the long-running science fiction series – so it deserves a big welcome rather than a small splash as an Xbox exclusive. Thankfully, Blizzard just confirmed it won't be.

Before Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in a historic 2023 deal, StarCraft was mostly a computer man's game, anyway. From the first StarCraft in 1998, to the franchise's most recent installment, StarCraft: Remastered in 2017, games in the series mostly rocketed between Windows and Mac OS. There was that one, short trip to planet Nintendo with StarCraft 64 in 2000, but StarCraft is historically loyal to the noble mouse and keyboard. This seemingly won't change now that Blizzard's under Xbox's jurisdiction, though the publisher refuses to give precise details as to what platforms StarCraft will appear on.

Instead, a Blizzard spokesperson simply told Kotaku in a new report that they "can only say for now that StarCraft won't be exclusive." After being pressed on the issue, Blizzard continues to say that referring to the shooter as an "Xbox-exclusive" would be incorrect.

While this is potentially great news for historic StarCraft computer gamers, it might disappoint Xbox fans – if there are any left. Some people seem to have convinced themselves that StarCraft will not only be exclusive, but also limited to the upcoming, next-gen console Xbox Project Helix. But this outcome was always unlikely.

Xbox has a fair-weather friendship with exclusivity. After its Activision Blizzard merger, games were flying all over the place – Call of Duty left PlayStation to appear on all consoles, and things that should have been Xbox blockbusters like Starfield ended up on PlayStation, too... and they weren't blockbusters.

But Xbox recovered. It started showing off its renewed interest in exclusivity this summer. At the time, chief strategy officer Matthew Ball told GamesRadar+, CEO "Asha [Sharma] believes that to build a platform, you must have exclusive services and software – in this case, games. And so to return our platform to consistent growth, we need a reliable pipeline of exclusive games."

Strangely, this exclusive games "pipeline" apparently does not include StarCraft, despite the franchise's huge popularity. But only Blizzard knows why.

Blizzard's new StarCraft shooter is "not a seasonal game," says lead: "The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end,"

Amid ongoing layoff chaos at Xbox, now-former Halo Studios cinematic director Josh Daniels says he was promoted and then immediately lost his job.

"Promoted and laid off in the same week is pretty wild," Daniels says in a LinkedIn post. "I’m one of the many hit by the Halo Studios layoffs. I’ll be taking some offline time today but very much would love to talk to anyone looking for Cinematic Direction or Production roles. Feel free to get in touch if anything looks like I might be a fit."

Earlier today, Microsoft announced the elimination of another 268 employees under Xbox, with Halo Studios seemingly hit especially hard. The Halo IP is now in the hands of Activision. Meanwhile, studios like Ninja Theory and Arkane are looking at closures, while Obsidian has been absorbed by Bethesda, Playground and Turn 10 have been combined, and Undead Labs is spinning out. Xbox's studio lineup is unrecognizable compared to even nine months ago.

The breadth of the layoffs is still coming into focus, with members of multiple teams including Gears of War: E-Day developer The Coalition reporting cuts.

In a statement, Xbox CCO Matt Booty said these layoffs have brought Xbox "roughly three-quarters of the way through" the restructuring plan previously announced by new CEO Asha Sharma, which will see 3,200 employees cut in total. This has forced countless Xbox employees and studios to work with an axe looming over them the entire year, uncertain of who will be laid off next or when.

Even as Xbox rushes to get games out and reportedly puts Bethesda's feet to the fire over Fallout and The Elder Scrolls production timelines, Microsoft leadership has overseen layoffs that cut veteran talents including many Fallout and The Elder Scrolls seniors. Nobody anywhere seems safe.

Halo Studios didn't have the chance to launch even one original title before Xbox decided to let Call of Duty publisher Activision try instead

Halo Studios lived a short, utilitarian life – Microsoft used it to create the perfectly serviceable Halo: Campaign Evolved remake, and now the studio is effectively retired after 268 layoffs impacting it and other first-party Xbox developers. But it never had the opportunity to be anything more interesting.

Thus is the plight of Western gaming. Big corporations keep being impatient for results, so they move straight to relentless "restructuring." That's what's happened here – Halo: Campaign Evolved was a fine remake, but it was not good enough to compete with the Call of Duties absorbing the modern FPS player's time.

So we can only mourn Halo Studios' recently summoned potential. Formerly known as 343 Industries, Halo Studios had been the guardian of Halo games for 20 years; Xbox established it in 2007, after Halo creator and former Microsoft baby Bungie went independent. Xbox then rebranded 343 as Halo Studios in 2024, saying in a press release at the time that the developer had new energy to produce more Halo "without distraction, without impediment, to create better games with players' hopes and wishes at the heart of the endeavor." … It didn't last long.

Following September 22's 268 layoffs, made in service of 3,200 total gory cuts to Xbox, Microsoft also shared that it was passing along the Halo franchise to Call of Duty publisher Activision. About the layoffs, Xbox writes in an announcement on its website, "We are reorganizing our studios. The goal is to strengthen our franchises and games by operating fewer business units, aligning groups that already work closely together, and focusing our publishing expertise."

Basically, it's going to let the behemoth that regularly ships billion-dollar Call of Duties handle Halo instead. Activision president Rob Kostich says the publisher wants to "make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place. It is a bold ambition, one that this franchise deserves. We have already begun assembling a purpose-built team, unique in capability and talent, ready and excited to deliver this next chapter with the community."

While Xbox disclaims in its press release that "a small team at Halo Studios will continue supporting the Halo community and games in-market," it seems like, for the most part, Activision is scraping off the old paint and starting again.

This is starting to sound like an old story – studio releases game, studio immediately undergoes mass layoffs no matter how much money it made, and whatever major corporation that owns it isn't concerned with the layers of grime coating its reputation. Just this year, this sad story has applied to Battlefield 6 developers, Destiny 2 developers, Directive 8020 devs, Tomb Raider devs, and many more in an especially difficult year.

ASGC Games Industry Layoffs Tracker creator Amir Satvat, who recently spoke to Edge for a feature now available to read in the Knowledge newsletter, says, "I think this is as bad as the '83 crash if you're a game developer based in North America or western Europe, in a traditional triple-A studio."

Notice that Satvat calls out Western developers in particular. The Japanese games industry has been triple-fortified from the storm of 2026 layoffs because, "They didn't get swept up in the live-service trend, or into these mega-blockbusters with 500-person teams," Satvat says. It probably helps, too, that they don't pay their executives $38,649,984 like EA did for CEO Andrew Wilson despite all those Battlefield 6 layoffs.

Laid-off id Software producer Andrew Willis shared a similar observation about Japan's brawny games industry in a recent interview with Kiwi Talkz, saying about Nintendo, "They're feeding the tree fertilizer and water. Trimming, you know, where necessary, and just making sure that it will healthily produce fruit forever."

"Our folks here," Willis continues, "in the more Western game executive side, they're just cutting it down. They want it now. And then they look around and they're like, 'Why aren't there any apples?'" It's almost as ridiculous as introducing Halo Studios and then firing everyone before they could make the next Halo.

Activision was playing the long game – the Call of Duty dev lost a bidding war to acquire Rare over 20 years ago, and now it's overseeing the studio.

The handheld PC scene was off to a refreshing start back in 2022, with the Steam Deck kickstarting a trend of very affordable portables that pack a punch. That was before the AI industry decided to convince component makers, fab labs, and any other entity holding the cards that consumer tech isn't a priority, and as a result, the days of getting a decent device for under $500 are long gone.

At least, they are, if you are gunning for most of the best gaming handhelds out there. I'm constantly staring into the void that is now retailer listings for affordable portables, wondering if anyone will bother to make something under $500, since the Steam Deck OLED starts at over $700. The closest contender to that coveted price tag is the ROG Xbox Ally, and opting for an open-box model is probably the best call right now; it's one I recommend begrudgingly.

Here's the thing: you can grab a white Xbox Ally (not the full-fat ROG Xbox Ally X with a Z2 Extreme chipset) for $479.99 at Best Buy, so long as you're okay with an open-box handheld in "good" condition. That's the sort of price I'm continually looking to pay for a portable, especially one that isn't gunning to be outright premium.

However, I am pretty peeved that to get a portable at the same prices that were standardized by the Steam Deck and OG Asus ROG Ally just three years ago, you now have to risk a handheld having "minor scratches or dents." That's before I even get to the base ROG Xbox Ally itself, as its specs don't really have the same next-gen feel as its Extreme sibling.

On paper, the Xbox Ally is pretty similar to Asus' 2023 model. You're getting 16GB RAM, 512GB storage, and the same 7-inch 1080p 120Hz display. Keep in mind that the older version hit under $400 during sales in the past, and while paying more would be easier if it came armed with a punchier chip, the AMD Ryzen Z2 A really resides in the same ring as the custom Steam Deck APU.

Effectively, the four cores and eight threads of the Z2 A won't boost fps like the Z1 Extreme with its 8/16 combo. Having tested the Lenovo Legion Go S, a handheld that uses a similar Z2 Go chipset, you're talking frame rates that are only just edging out the Steam Deck, whereas the first ROG Ally could comfortably outpace Valve's contender in many scenarios.

To really stomach picking up a ROG Xbox Ally, a handheld that would have been fantastic in 2023, you have pretend other portables didn't exist. The whole situation with gaming hardware is a bit silly, really, and it's hard to even find comparatively cheaper retro handhelds for their previous prices these days.

TL;DR - If you really need to pick up a handheld PC right now, Xbox Ally open box stock is a sensible option, even if we should really be enjoying the ROG Xbox Ally X for under $600 and Steam Decks for their launch price.

If you'd rather stick with the classics, check out how to play PS2 games and dive into some 2000s gems.

The new Fable has the unenviable position of bringing the series to a contemporary audience. After all, it's been 16 years since Fable 3, the last mainline entry. Playground Games is taking that responsibility seriously, with combat that merges new school and more classical mechanics.

"When we're talking about being faithful to the classic franchise, we thought about how there was an approachability to combat there," Will Kennedy, associate game director, explained to TechRadar. "And we knew that we wanted to be able to capture some of that for our game as well. But at the same time, we're making a game for gaming today."

It's a tricky balance. Fable has a lot of fans who've been waiting around for another installment - myself included - and we want this sequel to feel like the other games. But game development has evolved, and you don't want to alienate newcomers for the sake of making sure it still feels like 2009 to our old, decrepit hands.

"We wanted there to be breadth and depth to it, so we landed on wanting to have style-weaving combat," he says. "We wanted to be able to move from move to move really smoothly and easily, and that combined with the level expression that you've got."

The system Playground Games created is all about versatility. You can edit your loadout from the top down, and you have four spell slots to tinker with to see what works for you. Kennedy notes that you won't be playing long before "you have a really broad, deep, rich suite of options to choose from."

He adds the team is "really proud" of how "satisfying" the RPG feels. "We've landed somewhere that is still approachable but has that depth that we want and so therefore is faithful but works in gaming today as well for players, which is sometimes to be proud of," he finishes.

We'll see just what he means when Fable arrives in February 2027.

Fable devs originally had a tool to randomize the RPG's 1,000 NPCs that "would have saved us so much time," but that "just didn't make as much sense"

Blizzard union members represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have won a contract that shields a total of 1,900 workers at the World of Warcraft developer ahead of BlizzCon 2026, and in the middle of parent company Microsoft's ongoing plan to layoff a total of 3,200 people.

"It's a new day at Blizzard, where greater power for workers is translating into more innovative games for players," says CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. in a press release. The union – which includes World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Blizzard's story and franchise development team – is now guaranteed protections regarding layoffs, Microsoft's AI usage, and other urgent concerns.

"The company has to talk with us before implementing AI tech that affects our working conditions, and we get to negotiate over the impact of that,” senior World of Warcraft designer Paul Cox tells Aftermath "We'll also be regularly discussing AI as part of our labor management committee, which is the sort of meeting between the union and the company on a frequent basis where we can bring up everything from AI to 'Hey, people are complaining that the toilet doors have too large of a gap in them.'"

And since Microsoft is cracking its knuckles ahead of another 1,600 layoffs at Xbox, Blizzard union workers also made sure to secure "really strong layoff protections," Cox says. Union members are now eligible for at least four weeks of severance and recall rights that last 14 months, which give qualified laid-off workers the opportunity to be "recalled" into open positions at Blizzard during that time period.

Cox explains, "If WoW has a bunch of layoffs, but Diablo doesn't, and Diablo is looking to expand, the folks who are laid off from WoW can get recalled into Diablo if they're qualified, which has definitely never happened in our industry before, and is very rare to see just in general. So we are really excited about that."

Blizzard workers have been fighting to feel steady in an increasingly unstable industry for a while now – apparently, "a few hundred people" have been stationing themselves outside the Blizzard campus' 12-foot tall orc statue to make "noise on a regular basis," says Blizzard senior editor Alison Veneto. But Veneto thinks what really convinced Blizzard bosses to take the company's union members seriously was the threat of an awkward BlizzCon 2026, which starts on September 12.

"I'll go ahead and say it: BlizzCon is next week," she explains. "Going into BlizzCon without a contract with the level of mobilization that had been ramping up from Blizzard employees could have been uncomfortable." But now Blizzard union members' efforts have paid off, and everyone can relax – until the next thing.

43-year CRPG veteran behind Fallout and Wasteland "worried about job loss" from AI, which seems justified now that his parent company Microsoft laid off 9,000 in exchange for more slop.

Ubisoft, Sega, Bandai Namco, and Square Enix are reportedly some of the publishers who are not supporting the Xbox disc-to-digital program, leading to concerns of the initiative's viability as a preservation tool.

Microsoft announced its disc-to-digital initiative for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One games last month, and at the end of the month, users on the Xbox Insider Program were able to access the feature in a beta form. This led to interesting discoveries like Activision's Deadpool, Transformers: Devastation and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, as well as assorted titles from other publishers like Rock Band 4 and Lego Dimensions being available despite being delisted from digital stores.

However, unfortunately, Xbox Insider users have seemingly discovered another piece of the puzzle. As reported by users on Reddit, Ubisoft-published games are completely locked out of the program, with a message that reads, "This game is not participating in digital licensing." And since then, players on Reddit have reported the same thing is the case for Sega, Square Enix, and Bandai Namco, which in turn means every FromSoftware game, barring Sekiro, is unavailable on the service.

Sega is particularly interesting given that Sega president Shuji Utsumi pledged his support for physical games following Sony's announcement it's abandoning preservation by killing PS5 discs. On top of that, Sega has been a big supporter of the likes of Xbox Game Pass and Play Anywhere, so many are disappointed to see it seemingly isn't on board with this. However, the feature is still in beta, so hopefully Sega and others get on board once it's out in public.

13 years after famous Microsoft dunk, ex-PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says Xbox disc-to-digital feature is "a great move"

Double Fine has just regained its independence as a studio after seven years at Microsoft, who founder Tim Schafer initially didn't want as a dad anyway. But things seemed OK until new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma stepped in for Phil Spencer.

"No one puts Double Fine out of business except for me," Schafer tells Bloomberg in a new report. "Asha's not going to shoot my dog. I'm going to shoot it. But I'm not going to shoot it because it's going to do great. A lot of people want to walk the dog." It's a good dog – Double Fine made the fantastic Psychonauts 2 and always commits to weird experiments like pottery brawler Kiln.

The developer's allegiance to the strange is what made Schafer suspicious of Microsoft in the first place, when it offered to buy the entire studio in 2019. He remembers thinking, "I don't want to get bought by you," since, "You guys love shutting down studios." But former Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer was a real fan, and current Xbox CCO Matt Booty assured Schafer that Double Fine would get to feel self-sufficient – and it did, until Xbox's huge leadership overhaul this year.

"It's not all at once out of the blue," Schafer says, seemingly nodding to the realization that Sharma might have planned to include Double Fine in Xbox's mass layoffs. "It's like – oh, that person didn't reply to my joke text. That's kind of how you find out these things. So I knew before I knew."

Double Fine officially regained its independence on July 6 along with three other studios, including South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games. Schafer was convinced the studio would be dead at Microsoft "unless we had a breakout, Minecraft hit that year," but now he doesn't have to worry about such things; Double Fine just announced its new game Thank You Bus Driver on September 4. You play as a bus driver who wants passengers to say thank you.

"After all these years," says Schafer, "how little I understand about the business just shows how hard it is to know."

He continues, "That's why I'm focused on keeping my team alive. That's why we do these creative things all the time. If we stopped doing these wacky creative things, we'd eventually be like, 'Who cares?' These games aren't lucrative enough to make up for how hard they are. They have to also be really fun and rewarding to make."

After escaping Xbox, Double Fine lays off 23 people as Tim Schafer says "only the survival of our studio would ever make us consider such a painful action."

No consumer technology market is pleasant right now, but somehow, even during a RAMpocalypse, Sony and Microsoft are managing to make console gaming look like the worse of two evils. Both brands have filed motions to dismiss class action lawsuits that charge them with not passing on tariff refunds to their consumers, even while a few gaming PC brands are managing to make the consumer-friendly decision in the opposite direction.

In case you're not up to speed, last year, US tariffs were brought into play by President Trump that had massive knock-on effects for consumers. As import and tax rates changed on products produced outside of the US, some brands were forced to increase their prices. This impacted plenty of technology companies, but led to price hikes on the PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X.

Now, the US Supreme Court has deemed these tariffs illegal, resulting in refund payments being made to impacted businesses. That means that Sony and Microsoft are being paid back damages for the extra money they had to pay the US government for operation in its markets at the time - in fact, back in July, Sony told its investors that it expected to receive $508 million in refunds. In theory, this is money that should be passed on to the consumers who stomached the extra costs, not pocketed by the businesses who changed their prices to still ensure profits came in.

Lawsuits were filed against Sony and Microsoft that accuse them of hiking prices solely due to US-imposed tariffs and argue that consumers are now entitled to refunds, but both companies' legal teams have countered by requesting that a judge dismiss the suits, shunning any legal responsibility.

"There is nothing unjust about Plaintiff purchasing an Xbox at an advertised price and getting exactly what he paid for—regardless of whatever theory he devised months later about Microsoft’s cost structure," said Microsoft's legal team in their request for dismissal, according to Game File.

Similarly, Sony's legal team reportedly said: "Paying fair market price for voluntarily purchased consumer goods is not a legally cognizable injury in fact."

Pleading Sony's innocence and pointing blame at inflation, component costs, and demand, the letter also read, "If tariffs were the cause of the price increases, one would expect SIE to lower prices once the tariffs were eliminated – not raise them again.

"Instead, the timeline confirms that PlayStation console pricing includes a diverse and dynamic set of input costs," the letter reads in GamesIndustry.Biz.

Meanwhile, a little less than a month ago, PC building brand Arctic announced it would be passing on its US Tariff refunds onto its consumers through a US promotional sale of its goods:

"As a consumer myself, I feel your pain," said Arctic's CEO, Magnus Huber. "We're passing it on to you by offering a dedicated sales promotion across the US... it will remain active until every single dollar ARCTIC received from the tariff refund has been paid back to our customers."

This was a surprising move, particularly in a gaming PC economy that's absolutely rancid thanks to AI-induced inflation that's still impacting tech manufacturing, arguably more than US tariffs were.

Similarly, Panic, the maker of the Playdate handhelds, is also directly refunding customers who paid extra during the US-tariff period. Granted, this pro-consumer response is rare and not echoed by many other tech brands, but as industry leaders, it reflects badly on Sony and Microsoft to make less effort than smaller brands working to help their customers.

I'm not going to sit here and say that PC gaming is more affordable, but I think any ruse that Sony and Microsoft have managed to get across through the years that console gaming is somehow more consumer-friendly is dead and gone. In the last few months alone, Sony has announced the end of its support for physical media, has insinuated that anyone who doesn't understand digital licensing is an "unreasonable consumer", and has reiterated its terms and conditions through an email to PlayStation account holders that reminds them of their lack of digital ownership.

Yes, Sony, "for the players" indeed.

PC gamers should also take a look at the best graphics cards, the best RAM for gaming, and the best computer speakers.

Xbox Cloud Gaming, once a vaunted lure for the Microsoft ecosystem, will soon cap players to 5-to-15 hours of base playtime per month based on the tier of their Xbox Game Pass membership.

In a blog post, Microsoft outlines substantial changes coming to its cloud gaming service. "Today, eligible Game Pass subscribers can stream without these monthly hour limits," it reads. But beginning in November, subscribers will only be able to stream games through the cloud for a few hours each month.

• 15 hours a month for Game Pass Ultimate
• 10 hours a month for Game Pass Premium
• 5 hours a month for Games Pass Essential

This is, you may have deduced, not a lot of monthly gaming time – half an hour per day on average. What happens when you run out of cloud gaming time? Well, you won't be able to play games through the cloud until the month rolls over. Of course, you could also upgrade your subscription to gain more time, or, in a show of "you'll own nothing and like it" rarely seen, you can buy more playtime.

"Players will be able to purchase cloud playtime hours through the XBOX Store and stream eligible games they own on supported devices," Microsoft clarifies. "This will provide another option for people who want occasional access to cloud gaming or do not want a recurring Game Pass subscription."

Microsoft says just 4% of Game Pass subscribers with heavy cloud use will be impacted by this change, which, assuming it's true to how players would describe an impact, suggests the feature isn't especially popular. This seems to tie into Microsoft's explanation for "why we're making these changes." The short version? Money.

"We're introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer," Microsoft says. "Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost."

There's no getting around the optics here. In a world where people understandably resent, and will file lawsuits over, the obfuscation around digital game purchases amid the forced decline of physical games, paying for game time hour by hour is not going to win hearts and minds. "You are running out of playtime, please buy more" is the kind of offer you'd see a gaming subreddit cook up in some hyperbolic parody poster. And, well.

Xbox won some measure of good will with a disc-to-digital feature that could save delisted games, but this cloud gaming stance has renewed fears that – gasp – companies don't have your best interests in mind and our increasingly digital age will erode consumer rights if we let it.

Xbox boss Asha Sharma won't confirm whether Project Helix has a disc drive: "We have to be thinking about efficiency and affordability."

Xbox users have discovered that the new disc-to-digital feature allows players to access games that have been delisted from digital stores, but not all of them.

Microsoft announced its rumored disc-to-digital initiative last week, which will allow you to turn your physical game collections into digital licenses, which Xbox describes as part of its "commitment to game preservation." This has naturally been seen as a good win for Xbox off the back of PS5's total focus on abandoning preservation by killing physical games, leaving fans with a license that can be revoked at any time. But there were some caveats with Microsoft's initiative, notably that "most" games will be supported at launch, which led to fears it will not be all-encompassing and could be tied to licensing restrictions.

However, users who have access to the feature through the Xbox Insider Program have found that it isn't as cut-and-dried as fears have made it seem. As Twitter user Flaass points out, Activision's 2014 Deadpool game, which has long been delisted from digital stores, still grants a digital license for physical owners. And in the same thread, they note that Platinum Games' Transformers: Devastation and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, Ghostbusters, Lego Dimensions, Rock Band 4, and many more still grant licenses.

Unfortunately, it's not the case for every game; they note that Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 currently do not work. However, there's still a chance these could be added down the line, given the claim that "most" games will be supported at launch, hopefully meaning we eventually get every Xbox One and Xbox Series X physical game. And as someone who has a box full of Xbox 360 games taking up space in my office, I would very much appreciate support for older consoles.

13 years after famous Microsoft dunk, ex-PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says Xbox disc-to-digital feature is "a great move"

Former Halo series lead and Halo 3 ODST creative director Joseph Staten has praised The Witcher 3's new expansion, reflecting on what the team could've done with more expansions for Halo games.

Over on Twitter, Staten posted the Songs of the Past trailer, saying that it's "super inspiring to see CD Projekt Red deliver new Witcher 3 adventures," with the next expansion set to release 12 years after The Witcher 3 first released in 2015. He adds, "I often think about what it would have been like if we’d kept building on Halo 3 with ODST-like expansions – new stories, innovative mechanics, etc." Saying that it "Would have been great fun."

Halo 3 ODST is one of the most beloved games in the franchise for many. Originally starting as DLC for Halo 3, it took a different approach to campaign design than the main series had at the time, trading a lot of the spectacle for a film-noir-inspired title that's a bit smaller scale than the threat of world-ending catastrophes found in Halo 3.

When asked if this would've potentially been a smaller team within Bungie working on Halo side stories while the main team was focused on Destiny, Staten responded, "In theory, this only would have happened if we never left Microsoft, which likely means Destiny never existed."

While spinoffs aren't exactly rare, Halo 3 ODST is exactly the type of project I'd love to see from devs more often, smaller scale stories that perhaps focus on side-characters to bridge the gap between major sequels, Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales being another great example of this. And who knows, perhaps more titles like ODST could get Halo back on track.

Give Master Chief a break – I want more Halo games like ODST and Reach.

Halo co-creator and art director Marcus Lehto says he disagrees with some of Campaign Evolved's decisions, but is rooting for the franchise nonetheless.

The former Bungie creative director recemtly commented on the Halo franchise, with Lehto saying that "talk of Halo's future is certainly very exciting," but that it's "fanciful and that I doubt Asha [Sharma, Xbox CEO] really gives a shit."

He added that fans may not actually want him to return to the franchise, saying, "If I were to make another Halo these days, I bet many of you would not like it." This also followed his comments that he is unhappy the new Halo remake left multiplayer out of the package.

In a post on Twitter, Lehto acknowledges there's been "Lots of discussion about my thoughts on Halo lately." He explains, "I genuinely enjoyed Campaign Evolved and think there’s a lot of great work in it. I may disagree with some decisions, but I’m rooting for the team and for Halo."

Lehto adds, "I helped create it, and I’ll always care deeply about it."

Unfortunately, Halo hasn't had the best time since Bungie stopped working on the franchise. Halo 4 was received well enough, but Halo 5 and the subsequent messy release of Halo Infinite have left the fanbase burnt out. While remaking the first game in the series certainly feels like setting the stage to reboot it altogether, there's no denying that Halo has lost its luster along the way.

Give Master Chief a break – I want more Halo games like ODST and Reach.

Amid all of the GTA 6 leak shenanigans and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake rumors coming to fruition, word has been circulating online about another series potentially getting a new entry: the beloved Ori games.

If you're not familiar with Ori and the Blind Forest or Ori and the Will of the Wisp, they're charming Metroidvanias developed by Moon Game Studios – but published by Microsoft Studios and Xbox Game Studios, respectively. In other words, Microsoft essentially owns the rights to the IP rather than Moon Game Studios.

So, when rumors about another Ori game started coming to light, folks thought it'd be handled by new devs.

According to Thomas Mahler, CEO of Moon Game Studios and director behind both Ori games, however, that's not the case – and, in fact, there is supposedly no Ori 3 in the works anywhere.

"Once again there's a bunch of people asking me about Ori 3 since there's rumors floating about," as he writes over on X. "As before, I haven't heard anything about any of this." He then explains why he believes only his studio could pull a threequel off.

"I think after having put billions into 343 to handle Halo and not being able to recapture the old magic, I'd guess that by now Microsoft has learned their lesson that the right talent needs to work on those IP's, otherwise you'll undoubtedly get more slop," the lead states, alluding to the more mixed reviews Halo entries headed by 343 Industries saw, like Halo 4.

What Mahler says next about Moon Game Studios' own plans is quite eye-catching, though.

"Internally, we've been discussing our interest in purchasing the IP back," the CEO describes, because "I doubt any other studio could really do much with it, so it makes sense for this one to come home to Moon!"

In a later post, he reiterates all of this, writing, "I can confirm that the Ori 3 rumors are nonsense" and stating that composer Gareth Coker "asked me if we'd be ready to do another one" – another Ori game, that is. "'It's time,' he said!"

So, there you have it – there might not be a new Ori in the works after all. It's important to note that Xbox could still have something up its sleeve, as there's no real way to tell – but that may truly just be wishful thinking at this point, considering everything.

Searching for some new games to play? Browse through our handy little roundup of the best Metroidvania games out there right now.

Alright, that does it; we're now at the stage where a "Lego" OG Xbox you can't play games on costs what I'd pay for a real console right now. Yes, somewhere under $400 is what I think is reasonable even for the new 25th anniversary Series X, given that it launched six years ago, but apparently if you want the latest machine that can play games (wild, I know), it might cost near a grand.

I guess I see the humor in Mattel showcasing its Brick Shop OG Xbox Lego alternative in the same week as devastating 25th Anniversary Series X25 price leaks. There's only so long you can chuckle at potentially paying $899 for what is really just a translucent Series X with the same core performance and features. What's that? You scraped together 400 bucks for a current-gen system? Oh, that's enough for a retro console model since that costs $329.99.

There's a joke to be made about the Mattel Brick Shop Xbox model leaving you with $70 spare for a game, but I don't think I'm even in the mood. I have friends who deliberately held off from buying a Series X or a PS5 back in 2020, and it now feels like they're financially and functionally barred from a console update this generation. By the latter, I mean that they've got less reason to opt for a PlayStation since Sony is also abandoning physical games.

I can't help but feel like both Mattel and Microsoft are both ramping up MSRPs with no real basis. The toy maker previously released an Xbox 360 3:4 scale building block model with a $150 MSRP, and while it's slightly smaller, it's got the same lights, sounds, and detailing as the new kit. I should also point out that while that set was technically MEGA (previously MEGA BLOKS) branded, the company says it's a different product, but it absolutely feels like a brand pivot for the sake of premium pricing.

On the Microsoft side of things, the console maker is contending with the same component pricing issues as everyone else. Still, the RAMageddon ramifications aren't an excuse to release a new colorway of your console that's $400 more than the launch version. Yes, the OG Xbox vibes make for a nice 25th anniversary, but that's somewhat spoiled by the fact that the majority of players can't afford to come to the party.

The skinny here is that it should be the Series X25 that costs $329.99, and the Lego kit alternative OG Xbox should at least be the same price as its 360 predecessor. The $899.99 price tag would give me the ick slightly less if it featured souped-up performance like the PS5 Pro, but even that would spark indigestion symptoms.

If you need me, I'll be playing PS2 games in the attic where the pretend consoles for over $300 and near $1,000 machines can't hurt me.

• Xbox consoles at Amazon
• Lego gaming sets at Amazon

Take a look at the best retro handhelds if you need a gaming machine that's remotely affordable.

Nostalgia always comes at a price, and in the case of the swanky translucent green 25th Anniversary Xbox Series X that was shown off at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026 earlier this year, that price is apparently €899.99 / $899.99.

If you were keeping your fingers crossed that the upcoming limited edition console was going to cost the same as the $799.99 Series X, a leak shared by DealLabs is here to squander your dreams. Xbox itself has yet to officially announce how many smackaroos you'll need to fork out for its retro-inspired hardware, but the team at DealLabs Magazine has done their "own research" and has announced it'll launch on November 27 and cost €899.99 in France and Europe, which should approximately translate to $899.99 US dollars - an eye-watering MSRP that even matches that of the post-price-hike PS5 Pro.

As is always the case with any pricing leaks, I'd take this with a huge grain of salt. Not just because Xbox has yet to confirm anything, but because DealLabs Magazine doesn't offer any source for its pricing revelations. However, I can entirely foresee $900 being the expectation for this limited console, particularly after the recent price hikes in the US.

Earlier this month (on August 1 2026 to be exact), the 512GB Xbox consoles received a $100 increase, while the 1TB models rose in price by $150. That meant that the disc edition 1TB Xbox Series X went from $649.99 to $799.99, and that's the console that's been given the translucent green makeover. As tends to be the case with these limited-edition releases, there's likely to be an additional charge placed on top to facilitate the manufacturing of the unique 25th-anniversary-branded chassis and design, and that could very well take the total up to $899.99.

While DealLabs "exclusively" revealed their suspicions about the console's pricing, there was no word shared about the X25 Special Edition controller, which was originally unveiled alongside the 25th Anniversary console at the very same Xbox Games Showcase 2026. The pad, which takes inspiration from the OG Xbox Duke controller, is to be packaged with every console and available to purchase separately, but no leaks on its pricing has been unearthed.

The site states that price and pre-orders for the controller will be "discussed at gamescom 2026" so it shouldn't be long until we get an insight into its MSRP too. With the official Xbox Wireless Gaming controller retailing for $69.99, I suspect it won't be as dramatic a difference, but we'll have to wait until next week when Gamescom 2026 officially kicks off to be sure.

If you do want to capture some of that early Xbox nostalgia without having to wait for November, you should check out the $59.99 (Amazon) Jade 8Bitdo Ultimate 3 controller. The wireless controller is officially licensed by Xbox and is compatible with gaming PC setups and the Xbox Series X/S. Most importantly, it shares a similarly-looking transparent green chassis as the X25 Special Edition Xbox pad.

Sure, it doesn't have those iconic old green, red, yellow, and blue ABXY buttons that harken back to the early days of Xbox. Yet if you're handy with a screwdriver and modding, I'm sure you could find a way to circumnavigate that.

Already have an Xbox? Check out our guides to the best Xbox Series X controllers, the best Xbox Series X headsets, and the best Xbox Series X hard drives while you're here.

Sony and Microsoft had better think long and hard before pricing the next generation of consoles at $1000, as one prominent industry analyst predicts that could result in a huge drop in sales compared to the current generation.

According to a new report from Ampere Analysis (via VGC), there is a specific set of circumstances which seem entirely plausible that could see combined PS6 and Xbox Project Helix sales plummet 38% over five years compared to PS5 and Xbox Series X sales over the same time period. Those circumstances are A) The next-gen consoles launch with a base price of $1000, and B) they're "conventionally designed, incrementally improved" over the current generation, which is typically the deal these days.

In that scenario, the analyst predicts Sony and Microsoft would see a massive drop in adoption rates as well as a decrease in consumer spending that could negatively impact the overall console games and services market by 12%.

With PS5 Pros going for $900, trade wars ongoing, and RAM shortages showing no signs of improving, a $1000 PS6 isn't such an outlandish prediction. And yet, another industry analyst has gone on the record to say consoles that expensive could price out buyers "quite significantly."

The folks at Ampere reckon Sony and Microsoft could avoid that problem in several ways, either by delaying the start of the next generation until component costs go down, keeping prices low through "heavier hardware subsidies, new monetisation models, more aggressive digital content strategies and optimised sales channels," or by going in another direction entirely and "substantially" innovating in a way that doesn't rely on "graphical improvement." VGC cites the Nintendo Wii as an example of this, trading raw hardware power for form factor innovation.

Considering the Xbox Series S launched for $299 less than six years ago, it's staggering to consider a successor that costs more than triple that as the cost of basic living necessities like groceries, gas, and housing remains elevated. I'm no analyst, but it's easy to see how people living in today's economy would stay out of a $1000 console generation until things settle down.

Threats of a $1,000 PS6 have ex-Sony president just as scared as you are: "How much more ray tracing can you put in there?"

Halo universe co-creator and former Bungie creative director Marcus Lehto is having all kinds of strange ideas about the future of the franchise. But before you get too excited and start shooting your Needler pistol into the air, you should know the former Bungie creative director is certain you'll hate what he's thinking, and IP owner Xbox won't care.

"While talk of Halo's future is certainly very exciting, I'm aware that it's fanciful and that I doubt Asha [Sharma, Xbox CEO] really gives a shit," Lehto writes in an August 19 Twitter post. "Also, Halo MUST be built by a local team together," he adds, jabbing at Microsoft's reputation for internal layoffs followed by external contracting, "not outsourced around the globe to a group that has ZERO investment in making something great."

That could be that. But whatever Lehto's been mulling over sounds compelling, and Xbox has lately been experiencing more drastic changes than a little Halo revival, so...

Lehto teases in another Twitter post, "If I were to make another Halo these days, I bet many of you would not like it. It would be a lot darker with a more grounded military feel."

Then, while Halo games have always offered multiplayer PvP – Lehto despises the fact that the new Halo remake left this feature out – they aren't as reliable when it comes to PvE. But it sounds like Lehto wants to rectify this with a truly PvPvE Halo à la Arc Raiders, saying, "PvP would be the brains, PvE the heart and soul."

Ultimately, "It would not be 'everyone's' Halo," Lehto says confidently. In case he hasn't yet sharpened that point enough to tear through your gauzy memories of 2001, he adds that, "I would probably bench much of the current lore – respect it, but build a new future narrative for both the old and new audiences which makes much more sense."

Halo fans finally bared their teeth at this. A spooky, more militaristic Halo? Sure. PvPvE? Interesting. Xbox is currently an unsightly lump of job cuts and drooping revenue – fine, maybe it doesn't even deserve a new Halo game, that's not Lehto's fault. But threats to the lore are simply offensive, fans say, even if they come from the man who helped establish 26th century alien colonization.

"The lore is the only good thing about halo," one person argues on Twitter.

"I know this is just your aspirations, but Halo really can't afford another soft reboot," frets another.

Lehto gets it. If lightning strikes at the right time and his unconventional Halo sequel eventually gets approved, he says, first, "We'd need to sit together, break bread, and enjoy some deep conversation – along with some fine beverages of course." Can we get that in a Halo game?

Give Master Chief a break – I want more Halo games like ODST and Reach.

Earlier this week, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma experienced a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6, and offered some exuberant praise for it, alongside with an extra little teaser: eight asterisks. These eight asterisks, apparently, represent the game's subtitle, and they're lending credence to a longstanding theory that the title of the upcoming RPG will be The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel. It seems Bethesda may have even been planning this reveal since Starfield.

Both Asha's tweet and a follow-up message from Bethesda's own account were quite conspicuous in repeating "********," so it seems clear the devs expect us to be speculating on an eight-letter subtitle for The Elder Scrolls 6.

"Sentinel" instantly became a frontrunner among the guesses, since the name has history in Elder Scrolls lore. The kingdom of Sentinel – and the capital city of the same name – is a prominent location in Hammerfell, which has long been rumored as the RPG's location. That alone makes it a pretty compelling guess, to the point where even former Bethesda dev Michael Kirkbride had co-signed it, but there's more fuel for this fire.

When you create your character in Starfield, there's an employee number listed at the bottom of the screen: 190514-2009140512. You can split that number into two-digit components, as in 19, 05, 14, 20, 09, 14, 05, and 12. Count out each number to a corresponding letter in the alphabet and, well, you can probably guess where this is going. You'll get S, E, N, T, I, N, E, and L.

The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield were both announced at the same time, and certainly by the time Starfield was actually released in 2023, it's possible Bethesda had already decided on the next game's subtitle.

In any case, it's safe to say that the Elder Scrolls community has been taken by Sentinel fever at this point. The whole Elder Scrolls 6 subreddit has been overtaken by Sentinel fever, especially after the apparent Starfield teaser was pointed out. I'm on board with the sentiment the folks behind the UESP Wiki are tweeting: "I am starting to believe."

The Elder Scrolls 6 demo had a surprise guest at Bethesda HQ: a giant inflatable rat set up by protesting employees to watch Xbox execs who oversaw "devastating layoffs."

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma suggests she's just played, or at least watched, a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6.

"Live playthrough of The Elder Scrolls VI: ******** this morning," Sharma says offhandedly in a tweet. "The scale and grandeur are incredible. The story is even greater."

This "live playthrough" will presumably have been a milestone presentation shown to Sharma and possibly other Xbox executives by the development team at Bethesda, likely including chief Todd Howard, but we can't say for sure what the exact environment was like or how far along the demoed build is.

I've no doubt that Elder Scrolls scholars will pounce on the eight asterisks Sharma uses to censor the title of The Elder Scrolls 6, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it just yet.

That's your regularly scheduled The Elder Scrolls 6 teaser sorted. With the energy of someone who's checked the readings, found them wanting, and shattered the nearest glass labeled "break in case of emergency," Sharma's added another breadcrumb to the pile.

In June, Xbox CCO Matt Booty assured fans that, some eight years since its reveal, The Elder Scrolls 6 is "coming along well." He also joined Howard in the illusion that a game can be un-revealed, or at least revealed twice.

"I would say one of the more challenging balancing acts of someone in a job like mine is balancing that you want to go show the world all the cool stuff you're working on, and you want to get them excited early, but we also know that we want to wait till the right moment," Booty said.

"I can tell you, having visited Bethesda and sat with Todd and seen 'Elder Scrolls' playing, it looks amazing, and it's coming along well," he added. "And we'll make sure to announce it and really reveal it at the right time."

Last month, on the heels of layoffs that hit the studio as part of Xbox's widespread bloodletting, Bethesda announced a whole bunch of stuff about the future of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Amidst this torrent of announcements, The Elder Scrolls 6 was described as Bethesda's development priority, with multiple other games caught in its orbit.

The Elder Scrolls 6, like the pre-production Fallout 5, uses Creation Engine 3, which Bethesda says "extends beyond our teams to the technology, tools, and systems that will power the next generation of Bethesda RPGs."

"Unconscionable": The day of Bethesda's Fallout reveal explosion, its laid-off Montreal devs were told they "would receive the smallest severance legally possible" and "immediately" lose health insurance benefits, union says.

With Microsoft's plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox still looming over the industry as a whole and affecting various studios, id Software lead services programmer Chris Hayes says developers are left without "the incentive to care anymore."

Microsoft's cuts are certainly no secret, with a plethora of studios – including Bethesda and the like – losing developers mid-production. In a recent interview with Auf ein Bier over on YouTube, Hayes comments on the situation himself, criticizing companies for widespread layoffs.

"They weakened their studios," he starts (thanks, PCGamer). "When they do layoffs, they weaken and devalue their studios – but they don't understand that."

He continues, stating that companies like Microsoft "continue to say that they have strong studios while they weaken them." It's tough to listen to, seeing as he's definitely not wrong.

Heck, CEO Satya Nadella recently claimed Xbox has "the best IP" and "talented studios around the world," calling himself confident that it'll "return" to growth after its worst quarter in years amid the mass layoffs. So, yeah. Definitely not wrong.

Hayes goes on to say that "it is our experience together, our working together, and our past experiences that make the studio good" – and obviously, layoffs don't exactly fit into that picture.

"Yeah, you could just throw away half and bring in more later if you happen to need more number of hours to to fill out the check boxes that you want," the dev then admits… but that's not going to work in a company's favor, really.

"You're just going to end up with a mediocre game and people aren't going to be happy and everyone will know it," as Hayes states. "And that's the long-term thinking that doesn't seem to be present."

Not only is it not present, according to the id Software lead, but companies "fundamentally don't understand what makes the business." They might know numbers for marketing and the like, but not how to deliver a decent product.

"The actual reality of what makes a good game, how it gets done," that's what companies like Microsoft fall short of comprehending, as Hayes outlines. "They're so disconnected from that, they don't understand what it takes to build a team, what it takes to maintain a team – and that failures are important, too."

Rather than throwing in the towel following failures, the dev says it'd be beneficial to learn from them and allow team members to grow. But, sadly, that's far too often not how things work out.

"If you make a mistake, that's the last mistake you make as a team. That team is done. So no one's growing, no one's learning, and as a result, individuals don't have the incentive to care anymore."

I'm immediately personally reminded of The Elder Scrolls Online and how its team over at ZeniMax is back down to the same size it was a decade or so ago – and it's not a good reminder.

Hayes isn't the only person at id Software to speak out about the layoffs, either. Last month, producer Andrew Willis said, "You'll never get another World of Warcraft or Morrowind in the current climate" – a statement that sadly feels like it might just ring true if things carry on the way they've been going.

Here's hoping the industry heals a bit over time and that we see less news about studio reductions.

Mass layoffs expected at EA as the now-private publisher reportedly tells its new debt masters that it's going to cut $700 million in annual costs

Windows 11, an operating system I'm not convinced we even want powering out handhelds and PCs, has apparently hiked OEM licence prices. That means it has potentially cost more for companies to pre-install it on your gaming device of choice, and I can't help but think that's ridiculously bold of Microsoft considering Linux is gaining prominence.

The report, courtesy of Chinese publication UDN, claims Windows OEM licences have increased by "7% to 10%" since July (via Videocardz). That's according to a "PC brand executive" who says while Microsoft typically increases its fees for the operating system every year by single digits, it has now allegedly slapped OEMs with a much higher bill compared to previous years.

Increased supplier costs on anything linked to making gaming handhelds or full PCs will naturally aggravate already spiralling MSRPs. OEMs like the laptop manufacturer Framework have already been sounding the alarm on increases, including higher Windows licence fees, before now, so we could start to see it cited as a reason for higher price tags on far more devices.

I would perhaps take the idea that anything gaming-related is increasing in price due to Windows licence fee hikes with a grain of salt, at least until we get a blanket announcement from Microsoft. While OEMs don't negotiate on usage prices, the figures tend to be tied to various factors like machine specs and volume of production.

That is to say, some of the bigger names out there, like Dell and HP, could be getting discounts compared to smaller builders, and if we're talking about something like the ROG XBOX Ally X, then Asus likely isn't paying any licence fees since it's a partnership device. It's instead companies like Ayaneo who could end up footing a bigger bill as a result of these changes, meaning those extremely pricey boutique Windows handhelds could be hit.

Even if the effects aren't as dramatic as RAM and storage hikes sparked by AI demand, this is the last thing the gaming tech scene needs right now. It's safe to say devices like the Steam Deck OLED and the freshly launched Steam Machine have proven there's an appetite for a less bloaty OS for playing games, and if Microsoft isn't going to do the bare minimum to help the industry while it's in turmoil, it's perhaps an even bigger sign to switch to Linux.

Don't get me wrong: Windows has its perks when used with portables like the ROG Xbox Ally or alternatives like the Lenovo Legion Go S, but it has taken a while to get near SteamOS standards. New boons like OG Xbox emulation via Game Pass will also help keep the operating system in the mind of players, but Microsoft is playing with fire considering it'll rely on the PC scene for its upcoming Project Helix console.

I'll be watching to see how any potential Windows licence fee increases impact the scene, and if they contribute to the destruction of RAMageddon, I'll be banging the Linux drum harder.

• Handheld gaming PCs at Best Buy
• Gaming PCs at Newegg

Check out the best retro handhelds if you'd rather play classic capers on the go.

Gaming laptops with 8GB RAM are threatening to return to the shelves as the supply chain crisis wears on, but now Microsoft's own documentation is seemingly stepping away from high-memory configurations. The brand has removed its 32GB RAM recommendation for high-end PC gamers looking to run the most demanding games, deleting posts that championed the upgrade for the best gaming laptops. The URL previously pointing to a guide to optimizing your setup (Wayback Machine) now simply lands on the help desk.

Originally spotted by Windows Latest, the quiet retcon comes after Microsoft announced plans to drop a Surface Laptop with just 8GB RAM earlier this year. However, it also lines up with an increase in older gaming laptops appearing at retailers like Newegg and Best Buy with only 8GB to their name.

Of course, that Surface isn't designed to handle your Steam library but it is indicative of a wider shift towards low-memory releases in both the productivity and gaming space. The RAM's gone, but the demand your games place on your system certainly hasn't.

At the time of writing, Best Buy has over 40 gaming laptops listed with just 8GB RAM under the hood, with more mainstream brands running from $745 to $1,249.99. If you're looking to play modern titles, that's going to be money down the drain.

PC gaming has ballooned in cost over the last year, with RAM shortages and inflated SSD prices increasing rates for both manufacturers and consumers. It's why last year's gaming laptops can offer better value for money, though even those older rigs are seeing their own upcharges these days. To keep those costs lower, brands are wheeling out 8GB RAM configurations in lower end models, think the HP Victus, MSI Thin A15, and Asus TUF range.

The problem is Windows chomps through that memory by itself, leaving even less for your games to work with. Most releases from the past few years require at least 16GB to run smoothly, and in some cases, at all.

You can sacrifice your GPU, play on lower settings with fewer bells and whistles. You can drop down a CPU generation. You can even skrimp around a 512GB SSD. But, unfortunately in the current landscape, RAM isn't a sacrifice worth making. If you really want the latest releases to look their best, that 32GB is still necessary for certain scenarios.

While it's still considered a luxury, and far from a necessity for casual play, anyone running larger, more complex strategy titles or burning through a library of mods, will benefit by moving beyond 16GB. While I generally recommend most players opt for this middle ground, you'll find most RTX 5070 Ti-and up machines offering additional memory for better future-proofing.

Microsoft isn't going hell for leather here, it's far from recommending 8GB for your new rig. Its quiet removal of that 32GB power-mark, though, is a little shifty. After all, its original documentation was correct - 32GB is the sweet spot for a future-proofed system in 2026, whether it be laptop or desktop. As that memory supply is squeezed, though, it simply doesn't want you to know that.

So what does it mean for your next gaming laptop?

In short, big spenders should still be aiming for 32GB RAM, despite Microsoft's awkward silence on the matter. On the other end of the spectrum, while it's unlikely mainstream brands will launch 8GB RAM gaming laptops en masse next year, it's worth taking a cautionary approach when hunting cheap gaming laptop deals.

There are four-figure machines out there that appear to be solid deals when on sale but skimp out on your memory, always double check that you're getting at least 16GB. If you're making sacrifices to keep that price tag low, opt instead for IPS displays, less storage, or even a downshift on your GPU. After all, running something in 1080p with reduced textures is always better than not being able to run it at all.

• See all 16GB gaming laptop deals at Best Buy

I'm hunting down all the best Asus gaming laptops and the best Razer laptops on the market, or take a look at the best Alienware laptops available.

Alongside Microsoft's rumored disc-to-digital plan, the company is reportedly bringing Xbox 360 games to PC as part of an expanded emulation rollout this year.

A leaked roadmap shared online and corroborated by The Verge indicates that Xbox 360 games will be playable through emulation on next-gen console Project Helix, PC, and compatible handheld PCs.

The roadmap suggests PC backwards compatibility will fully launch in October, with Xbox 360 catalog integration coming in waves throughout 2027 and 2028. Bear in mind that it's unclear how these timelines may have shifted within Microsoft.

Last month, Xbox announced a new backwards compatibility program which, so far, has seen four classic Xbox games come to PC. This Xbox 360 program appears to be an extension of this work.

This follows word that Xbox Project Helix will play PC games and is even more PC-like in its architecture.

Microsoft's emulator on PC, regarded quite solidly by some in terms of sheer performance for the original Xbox games released so far, will seemingly handle all the legwork. The roadmap says Microsoft will handle certification and compatibility testing, store listings, player support, updates, and maintenance for "local PC execution" (not cloud or streaming) emulation.

Devs will seemingly only need to sort out commercial details like "price, Game Pass, promotions," and availability or opt-ins.

The same roadmap says public testing for the rumored disc-to-digital conversion, which would purportedly give owners of physical Xbox games an entitlement tied to their exact disc but stored in a digital library, was meant to begin in July – right alongside "Back Compat early access (Original Xbox titles)," which lines up with the aforementioned PC releases for those four classic games.

"Disc to Digital General Availability" is listed for an August 2026 launch for "all Xbox One & Series X owners," so if this timeline hasn't changed dramatically, we should be in for an announcement soon.

This Xbox push for digital availability comes on the heels of PlayStation declaring the end of discs. By abandoning physical games, fumbling its announcement, failing to address player concerns, refusing to act on digital rights, and generally playing the silent game, Sony has somehow handed Microsoft a shot at the kind of PR slam dunk that the PS4 enjoyed in the 2010s with the notorious Xbox One DRM fiasco.

It would be stupid to celebrate one calamitous company and praise another in the same breath, and a lot of questions remain unanswered here, including about Microsoft's own future physical game support. Yet with expanded emulation, availability, and digital ownership, Xbox may well be off to a better start than PlayStation.

"There has to be a reason for people to buy an Xbox": Making sense of Microsoft's messy return to console exclusivity.

As Sony doubles down on its plan to end support for physical PlayStation games, game preservation group DoesItPlay finds that about a third of physical PS5 games effectively don't work without a download, and that jumps up to 50% on Xbox Series X.

Ars Technica spoke to DoesItPlay owner and head admin Clemens Itsel, reporting that 27% of the 3,511 physical games tested so far require a download "to fix game-breaking bugs or obtain core game content" not present on the disc.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a useful example. Can you play that game on console without a download? Sure. But should anyone suffer through the disastrous day-one console build of that game? Heck no.

“There is a clear trend that physical releases are increasingly treated with ignorance from larger companies," Itsel argues. "There is no reason physical games would ever die unless someone like Sony deliberately kills them."

DoesItPlay tests physical games using an offline environment and local accounts that have "not been connected to any online services like PlayStation Network, EA Origin, Bethesda.net, Battle.net, etc."

The group's methodology is fairly straightforward. By beating a game's main story (or mode), testing "common stress situations," documenting bugs and missing content, comparing region and edition gaps as well as platform discrepancies, it creates a profile for how offline-friendly a disc is.

It's easy to call out whether a game requires an online connection to function. The necessity of a download gets a little grayer. DoesItPlay has four different ratings for "download required," which can be summarized as:

• No: The whole game is on the "physical medium," disc or cartridge, doesn't have significant bugs requiring patches, and "only insignificant content" requires a download
• No*: the game is content-complete but "has bugs that are either too severe or too many to provide," or is missing minor content accessed via downloads
• Yes*: You can beat this game with "a very high tolerance of bugs or luck to progress past them," or the game is missing "significant side content" like story DLC, new characters, and so on
• Yes: If a "hard-coded prompt for a download" doesn't stop you, game-breaking bugs or essential, download-only content will

Again, let's pick on Cyberpunk 2077. It gets a "yes" for offline friendly, and a big red "yes" for "download required." DoesItPlay explains: "Power of the PS5 masks a few technical issues, but even the PS5 can't completely mask the framerate issues, pop in, and bugs."

Itsel heavily criticizes the way even physical copies of games have been hollowed out.

"Xbox has long given up on producing fully functioning physical releases," he says amid rumors of Microsoft testing a disc-to-digital service. "They far too often require downloads or force players to create a Microsoft account. It's deliberately undermining the value of physical releases by making them incomplete or online-dependent in other ways."

It's not just Xbox, either. Itsel calls the Nintendo Switch 2's game-key cards "a form of deception" for essentially putting redemption keys on a cart, and says the root problem is how companies have been allowed to "relabel a purchase into 'licensing'."

PlayStation ditching physical games is "a bridge across the bad years" of high hardware costs, analyst says, but it means "casuals and youngsters will drift off to mobile, PC, and free-to-play even faster."

That Xbox price increase we were warned about back in June? It's coming up this weekend.

From August 1 (Saturday), you'll be paying a whopping $799.99 for a 1TB Xbox Series X console, with the cheapest 512GB Series S now coming in at $499. That's a $100 price increase at the bottom end of the market, and a $150 jump at the top.

It goes without saying, anyone looking to pick up an Xbox any time soon should do so before those rates increase, but please don't rush out and buy a brand new console. If you're set on buying an Xbox this year, I'd implore you to check out certified refurbished options from Microsoft instead.

That's because even the current rates are inflated compared to launch, this isn't Xbox's first time at the rodeo. The 512GB Xbox Series S still costs $399.99 brand new, whereas it hit the shelves for just $299.99 back in 2020. Microsoft's refurbished rates won't get get you back down to the glory days, but they're a damn sight better than $500.

Unfortunately, it looks like Microsoft only has the cheaper Series S in its warehouses at the moment, and Best Buy's Geek Squad seems to have run out of Series X devices to ship as well. That means anyone hunting down a new full-fat console before Xbox price hikes come into effect are stuck with brand new devices, and their already lofty rates.

I'd wait this one out. Stock of certified refurbished Xbox Series X consoles does periodically return to Microsoft's shelves and even if this weekend's price increases do stick with those older devices you'll still be paying a little less.

If you're dead set on picking up a fully fledged Series X before the weekend, I'd stick with Microsoft. You'll find the OG disc console for its latest $649.99 price point, whereas Best Buy and Amazon seem to have gone off the deep end with their only stock priced at $800 and higher.

How much are Xbox prices increasing by?

Most Xbox consoles are seeing prices increase by $150 after August 1, with the exception being the 512GB Series S.

• Xbox Series X (1TB, disc) | $799.99 (was $649.99)
• Xbox Series X (1TB, digital) | $749.99 (was $599.99)
• Xbox Series S (1TB) | $599 (was $449)
• Xbox Series S (512GB) | $499 (was $399)

At its new $799.99 MSRP, the disc Xbox Series X is now the most expensive non-Pro console on the market, with the PS5 Slim at $649.99 after Sony's own price increases. Sure, it's not as bad as the $899.99 PS5 Pro, but considering this is a launch device that started life at $499.99 it's pretty egregious.

Current RAM shortages are pushing prices up across the entire industry, from individual components to prebuilt gaming PCs and gaming laptops, all the way through to the Nintendo Switch 2. It may seem like consoles are disproportionately more expensive, but everything is seeing this kind of inflation, it's just that not everybody has to announce their increases every time they're made.

• See all Xbox accessories at Best Buy

If you do decide to jump in before prices increase again, check out the best Xbox Series X controllers and best Xbox Series X headsets.

Following Microsoft's plans to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox coming to light, it's been hard to imagine just how the company's – and, more specifically, its gaming branch's – future looks. According to CEO Satya Nadella, however, the future is bright.

During an earnings call following a quarterly financial report, one that notably shows Xbox having had its worst quarter in terms of profits in years, the Microsoft lead shares as much.

"When it comes to Xbox," he explains, "we are making the necessary decisions required across our content portfolio, platform, and operations to reset the business for long-term growth."

This echoes what Xbox head Asha Sharma has been saying about Xbox having a "reset" – although she has also admitted the company is "unhealthy" in its current state.

Nadella goes on to assure, "We have the best IP in the industry, and talented studios around the world, and believe we can bring these strengths together and expect to return the business to growth in fiscal 2027." This feels like a lot, given, well, everything.

Nadella discusses Windows as a whole, and its other brands like Bing and Edge, concluding that, "In closing, I am energized about the opportunities ahead. I have never been more confident in Microsoft's opportunity to drive durable, long-term growth and ensure the benefits of AI flow broadly."

It's certainly a notable bout of confidence, all things considered – but it does leave me wondering: which IP is the CEO alluding to?

The Elder Scrolls and Bethesda's other RPG giants immediately spring to mind, as does Gears of War with its upcoming entry, Gears of War: E-Day. It's difficult to fathom a healthy, thriving Xbox, however, amid all of the layoffs and shuffling about – "best IP in the industry" or not.

I suppose only time will tell what the future holds for Microsoft's gaming branch, though. There are a good few months left until the next quarterly financial report.

200 million new Xbox players weren't enough to offset falling revenue in its latest fiscal year, CEO says: "We need to close that gap."

200 million new players coming to Xbox and its games weren't enough to drive growth in the company's business, according to CEO Asha Sharma.

Xbox just had its worst quarter in years, no thanks to a 10% fall off in revenue from "content and services" and a 13% drop in hardware revenue over the last few months of Microsoft's 2026 fiscal year. Despite all of those flailing stats, Sharma says a ton of new people checked out the gaming division's stuff, actually.

"In [fiscal year 2026], over 200 million new players came to XBOX and our games, but our business did not grow with our audience," Sharma notes over on social media. "We need to close that gap by investing in what players value. That will take time, but we expect to return to growth by the end of [fiscal year 2027]."

Over the last fiscal year, Xbox put out a good chunk of games between Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Forza Horizon 6, The Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden 4, and more. The company's numerous evergreen hits (your Minecrafts and Candy Crushes) and multiplatform ports (Starfield) likely also drove growth in the company's player numbers. But, regardless, there's a pretty dramatic gulf between the amount of people checking out games owned by Xbox and the money Xbox is actually making.

Earlier this month, Sharma took some dramatic steps to reorient the company. That included sweeping layoffs across the Xbox division. Four first-party studios were also spun out – Double Fine and Compulsion Games are now independent developers, while Undead Labs and Ninja Theory are in the process of joining new ownership.

As for its current fiscal year – the one we're in for the next 12 months or so – Xbox is betting that its messy return to exclusives could help right the ship. We'll see how the launch of Gears of War: E-Day goes later this year.

Despite Battlefield 6 layoffs, EA paid its CEO 305x more than its average employee last year thanks to an $8 million bonus increase — and he could net another $125 million in severance as buyout looms.

Xbox is not doing well. On the back of seismic layoffs in its gaming brand, Microsoft reported a 10% decline in Xbox "content and services revenue" in its fourth-quarter report for the 2026 fiscal year, making this the worst quarter for Xbox revenue since the first quarter of FY2024.

Xbox hardware revenue, specifically, was even weaker, falling 13%.

Total Xbox revenue came in at $4.983 billion for the quarter, which is the lowest reported since Q1 2024's $3.919 billion. For comparison, the previous three quarters of FY2026 saw between $5.34 and $5.95 billion.

A double-digit 10% decline into the sub-five range is significant even for Xbox, which regularly reports declines of some sort. For the whole year, Xbox revenue is down about $1.66 billion.

The full report is unsurprisingly AI-heavy, with Xbox only getting a few small mentions. Unsurprisingly, due to all those layoffs, Microsoft reported "severance expense and impairment charges" in Xbox, though it says these were "partially offset by lower-than-expected expenses related to the Voluntary Retirement Program" it announced previously as yet another way to cut employees.

It's alright, though: Microsoft says its $3.2 billion investment from AI company Anthropic is helping out, and its operating income was $40.6 billion for the quarter anyhow. The company's total revenue for the quarter was $90 billion on the dot, the highest in at least several years.

CEO Satya Nadella is not short on praise for AI.

"We are advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve, ensuring every customer can turn tokens into business results," says Nadella. "This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation."

Xbox Game Pass failed to hit subscriber targets because most people don't play lots of games, says analyst, and going indie won't save it: "I don't see a solution."

Xbox is down, right on the heels of a timely PlayStation outage which punctuated concerns about Sony's proposed all-digital future.

This Xbox outage has now lasted several hours, and seems to have gotten worse after reports first emerged late July 26.

At 7:54am ET, the official Xbox Support Twitter account wrote: "Just checking in on the game library, sign-in, and game launch issue. We know this has been going on a while and appreciate your patience while our teams keep working on it."

The Xbox Status support page affirms that "account and profile, store and subscriptions, games and gaming, and apps and mobile" functions are all experiencing a "major outage."

As of 9:43am ET, Xbox support says it has "identified the issue" for all four areas and has a resolution "pending." These outages were first reported around 11:10pm ET on July 26, according to Microsoft's tracking.

"You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems," a support disclaimer reads. "Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won't be available."

This also extends to your ability to find specific games in the Xbox store, opening apps, and, yes, "you may have problems playing your digital games right now." As ever, any blow to physical games is bad for everyone, whether you actually buy discs or not.

Additionally, Microsoft confirms, "You may have problems playing disc-based games right now." Ah, the joys of modern connectivity.

Xbox is reportedly testing a feature to digitize physical game collections as PlayStation decides to phase out discs.

Xbox is testing a new "ad-supported" version of its game streaming service, which will frontload advertisements at the start of a session, folding additional monetization into gaming time.

Microsoft announced the program today, July 23. Xbox Insiders who signed up for the platform's early access features can now test ad-supported streaming for "a limited time."

"During this test period, XBOX Insiders with an XBOX account will be able to stream games they own for free with ads," the company clarifies. "Players will have one hour session limits across supported devices and regions."

Microsoft maintains that "the core game experience is unchanged" once you get through the initial ads. Additionally, this ad tier is "optional" and "players can choose other ways to play at any time."

Some games and gaming services have had ads for many years, and platform holders are increasingly experimenting with more ways to monetize screen time and space.

Microsoft reckons advertising in gaming "hasn’t always been built with the player in mind," but insists that, "when done well, advertising can help lower the cost of access," loosely echoing the ad-supported tiers of TV and movie streaming services.

After this test for streaming, Microsoft says it will "continue to improve it based on how players use it and what they tell us. Our goal is simple. Give more people more affordable ways to play."

The company lays out the core pillars for "ad-supported services across Xbox," indicating that this is not a one-off experiment.

In short, Microsoft says such ads should "not interrupt the flow of gameplay," must be held to "the same quality bar as our content," should be "clear" about what's being advertised, and ought to suit "what players expect on each platform."

In the starchiest bit of corporate speak, Microsoft stresses, "We start with the player. Ads should create value." Players: they love value.

Following eyebrow-raising comments last month, Xbox's new chief strategist Matthew Ball explained that in-game ads that interrupt gameplay would be a bad idea.

Earlier this month, EA advertising VP Alexander Dao argued that in-game advertising is a "huge opportunity" for many developers.

As part of the C-suite house cleaning and ongoing staff bloodletting at Xbox, new CEO Asha Sharma appointed new VP of engineering Jared Palmer on May 5. Just months later, he's already leaving the company.

Palmer shared the news on Twitter today, just over two months since his appointment was made public.

"Personal update: I've joined [Cognition] to lead engineering," he says. "I'm grateful to [Asha Sharma] and everyone at Xbox for an amazing year."

Cognition, if you're unfamiliar, describes itself as the home of "Devin, the first autonomous software engineer" and "a team of interdisciplinary makers who love working on the hardest problems in AI."

In May, Palmer said, "I’ll be focused on building world-class tools, services, and experiences for developers and players across the Xbox ecosystem. Grateful for the opportunity and excited to get to work."

Palmer, like Sharma herself, previously worked at Microsoft's CoreAI. Another May appointee, David Schloss, who's now head of Xbox subscription and cloud work, previously worked at Instacart, also like Sharma, who was once its COO.

Jonathan McKay, Tim Allen, and Evan Chaki were also put to work under Sharma around the same time. Everyone but Palmer seems to still be at Xbox.

At the time, Sharma said, "Our goal with this [leadership] change is simple: build a platform that is affordable, personal, and open by staying close to the work and the people we serve."

Xbox Game Pass isn’t "viable" with so few subscribers, says former Forza lead bracing for more "studios getting shut down."

Alpha Dog Games – a studio shuttered by Microsoft two years ago – has reemerged as an independent studio.

Two years ago – in what was the beginning of Microsoft's apparent new trend of yearly summer layoffs – Microsoft shut down Prey developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, and Mighty Doom developer Alpha Dog Games, as well as folding Roundhouse Games into ZeniMax Online Studios. While Tango Gameworks was eventually revived by PUBG publisher Krafton, the other studios remained closed for the last two years.

However, out of nowhere, the LinkedIn profile (via Vice, spotted by regular LinkedIn sleuth Timur222 on Twitter) of the studio's founder, Shawn Woods was updated with the section under Alpha Dog Games saying "independently owned, again." Bethesda acquired the studio back in 2019, where it was then brought under the Microsoft banner following its purchase of ZeniMax.

While the update was reportedly only added to his profile recently, Woods' profile lists this tenure as "May 2025 – Present" suggesting that the studio actually went independent last year while Phil Spencer was still head of Xbox.

Earlier this month, Microsoft started its fifth batch of layoffs since spending $75 billion on acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023, which resulted in Compulsion Games and Double Fine both going back to being independent developers, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs being purchased by currently unknown buyers, and Arkane "reviewing potential strategic options." And in 2024 – shortly after being purchased by Microsoft as a part of Activision – Crash Bandicoot and Spyro developer Toys For Bob went independent.

At the time of writing, "Independently owned, again," is the extent of what Woods has had to say about the return of Alpha Dog Games, so it's unclear what the studio is working on. While Microsoft's layoffs have done untold damage with the amount of developers now looking for work and the years of knowledge leaving the industry due to an ever-increasing lack of opportunity, it's a little glimmer of light to see studios retaining their independence.

"Don't fall for it": Union says Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 news shouldn't distract you from huge Bethesda layoffs as Xbox CEO praises the series' "remarkable" achievements.

I didn't realize I'd stopped playing new releases until my wife pointed it out one day. "You've been playing a lot of super old games lately," she remarked to me, and I didn't think much of it at first. But her words echoed long enough to make me stop and ponder exactly why I'd been snubbing new games in favor of old. I've come to the conclusion that I'm using them as a security blanket of sorts.

Writing about video games for a living in 2026 means generative AI and mass layoffs consume up to 100% of my headspace on any given working day. Whether it's another big company like Xbox announcing hundreds of redundancies or a C-suite executive extolling the dubious virtues of artificial intelligence, I log on for work each morning fully expecting to learn about something terrible to research and communicate to you, dear reader.

Don't get me wrong, the gravity of a story about corporate restructuring is usually offset by something fun, like a Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Balatro crossover. But as upsetting stories continue to take up a greater share of my workload with every passing week, it's no wonder that I'm escaping the horrors of gaming's present by losing myself in its past.

Take the pain away

My recent retro gaming phase came about organically. I hurt my back the other week and spent several days faced with a very physical dilemma. I could stay lying down, or exist in a state of perpetual agony. There's not much you can do in that situation besides watch TV and play video games, and I found myself doing a lot of both.

But what surprised me was my instinct to exclusively play very old games. As in, games that launched at least 15 years ago. In a mild state of sedation from over-the-counter painkillers, I reached for what was most comfortable: games from my childhood, like Pokemon Leaf Green, Diablo 2, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

It feels markedly different from the casual, inconsistent relationship I've had with the best retro games up until recently, fueled by an impulse to comb through my Switch Online subscription a few times a year and play something from the N64 collection. I'm sure many people resort to the same thing out of convenience, boredom, or lazy curiosity. But my current fixation on retro games is borne from something much more intentional, decided by whatever subconscious part of my brain is in charge of protecting my inner peace.

I can't be the only one whose sense of inner peace feels constantly threatened by games news headlines. The industry has always had its ups and downs, but 2026 is proving a uniquely challenging year.

Universally-acclaimed releases like Crimson Desert are weighed down by varying degrees of controversy. Marathon, Bungie's genuinely great new extraction shooter, has been saddled with responsibility for the death of Destiny 2. I had a lot of fun playing Highguard for the 90 minutes it existed before being permanently shut down, and then I just felt bad for the dozens of developers who worked on it that were suddenly out of a job. I was excited about Subnautica 2 for years, but after extensively covering the legal drama between the original developers and publisher Krafton, it became harder and harder to immerse myself in its world.

Old games let me detach from that misery. When I'm playing Dragon Quest 8, I'm not worried about whether that Dancing devil or Fencing fox was conceptualized using AI-generated art. My friends and I can go a few rounds in Halo 2 without worrying about the livelihoods of everyone who made the game. I can save the world as Tidus in Final Fantasy 10 and not even once think about phrases like shareholder value or operating margins.

What's even better is finding old games I'd never played or revisiting those I bounced off years ago, which I'm ashamed to admit was the case with Skyward Sword – a game I now regret ever saying anything bad about when I was young and stupid.

A link to the past

A lot of what bums me out about today's games also existed 10, 20, even 30 years ago (EA has been shutting down beloved studios long before Microsoft) but it wasn't at the forefront of the zeitgeist like today. Circumstances appear so exacerbated right now because seemingly very little has been done to address the industry's fundamental issues.

There are fewer and fewer places for laid-off developers to safely land. Startup studios consistently struggle to establish a footing due to the increasing scale of development. Meanwhile, billion-dollar companies appear slow to learn from their mistakes, buying companies and IP only to cut staff and shutter studios when sales don't measure up to investor expectations.

The games industry feels less sustainable than ever. I don't know how we're going to fix it, but playing older games in 2026 has had the ironic effect of sparking optimism for the future that I haven't felt in a while by reminding me how far we've come.

Real progress has been made for better representation in games. Investigations into workplace toxicity have resulted in high-profile departures and institutional changes. Workers are successfully unionizing at an encouraging scale, and the impact of crunch culture has been put under a spotlight like never before. We've a long way to go in each one of those aspects, but I'm choosing to believe the same collective drive for a better industry will fuel worthwhile movement in areas causing so much strife today.

In the meantime, I'll dutifully continue keeping y'all informed of the latest atrocities in the hopes that one day I'll find myself writing more about BOGO indie RPGs and less about people losing their jobs. But in my free time, you'll find me curled up under a warm, fuzzy mountain of retro games, whisked away to a simpler time.

Check out all the best N64 games to re-explore if you also want to lose yourself in the good old days.

After someone almost lost all their games and everything in their OneDrive due to Microsoft's data protection policies, Xbox is now actively helping others who've had their accounts compromised. The company has put out an open call for anyone who's somehow locked out of their library to reach out for a potential remedy.

Just last week, streamer Joshua Khane found himself in an extremely frustrating position. He contacted Microsoft over unauthorized access to his information, and the official response was to lock him out of his games and whatever he kept on his OneDrive, which included precious family photos.

Angry and desperate, he posted about this on social media, leading to enough uproar that the corporation took another look and was able to restore his access. In the wake of this, Xbox is now dealing with people who had the same problems but never got another look.

"Everyone we responded to should have a DM from us with next steps, just reply there and we'll continue from where we left off," the official Xbox support Twitter account posted. "If you're also dealing with this account recovery issue, our DMs are open, reach out and we'll help as quickly as possible."

I'm going to guess there's now a substantial queue, quite a bit longer than usual, in the green-tinted console's inboxes. What happened to Khane could happen to anyone with a Microsoft account, and where his story got traction, there are likely plenty of others with similar complaints who didn't.

In a follow-up video about his accounts being sorted out, Khane mentions that although the wording for the reply he got made the situation sound definitive, it turns out that wasn't necessarily true.

"What bothers me the most is that they were telling me that it was irreversible," he says. "It's just unfortunate that such a big company can bring back your account if you ask them to. The way it all went is really, to me, it's a little bit shady, because it's not that they can't bring back your account, it's that they won't bring back your account if you're a nobody."

Whether or not the support teams can help each individual person is another question, but at least there's now potential for users to get a better outcome.

"Don't fall for it": Union says Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 news shouldn't distract you from huge Bethesda layoffs as Xbox CEO praises the series' "remarkable" achievements

Bethesda just announced a whole lot of news about the future of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and if you find the timing of it all a bit suspicious, you're not alone. United Videogame Workers-CWA says the announcement is an "intentional" distraction from the layoffs happening at Bethesda.

"The timing of this kind of press is intentional," UVW-CWA says in a Bluesky post. "How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it."

UVW-CWA is a direct-join union representing game workers across the industry, but it does not represent any one specific workplace. The CWA part of the name is for the Communications Workers of America, which supports several workplace unions at various Microsoft-owned game studios, including Bethesda.

The timing of this kind of press is intentional. How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it.

— @videogameworkers.bsky.social (@videogameworkers.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T20:21:37.854Z

Employees across Microsoft's gaming divisions staged protests last week in support of those affected by the Xbox layoffs. Game Developer reports that unions are also taking legal action against Microsoft.

According to CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth, "The unions CWA and CWA Canada have jointly filed unfair labor practice complaints against Microsoft alleging the company has unlawfully fired people without giving notice to or discussing it with the union as the employer is legally obliged to do when we are in the middle of ongoing bargaining [for] a collective agreement."

For her part, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is celebrating the historic success of Bethesda's various franchises on Twitter. "The achievements of these franchises are remarkable: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has crossed 65 million units sold, becoming one of the 10 best-selling games of all time, Fallout 4 has also crossed 35 million units sold, joining the top 25, and Starfield will soon reach over 1 billion hours played," she says.

But at a certain point, you have to start asking whether the developers who actually made those games have actually seen the fruits of their success. Certainly, they're not getting royalties – come on, this is the video game industry – but many aren't even getting to enjoy continued employment. We've only gotten anecdotal details on individuals who have been laid off, but we know their numbers include Christiane Meister, a 27-year veteran of everything from Morrowind to Fallout 4, and Dane Olds, a 20-year vet with a similar list of credits.

But hey, Fallout 5 is coming! And The Elder Scrolls 6! And Obsidian's making a new Fallout game of its own, finally – never mind the reports that Microsoft canceled the studio's Avowed follow-up in order to have it build something for the far more popular franchise. I'm certain that the developers who remain at these studios are putting their all into their work, but it's tough to see today's announcement as much more than Microsoft's attempt at jingling keys in front of the eyes of gamers who've grown increasingly exhausted of the industry's most cynical business practices.

Todd Howard says layoffs at Bethesda were "really tough": "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises."

Bethesda Game Studios has undeniably felt the impact of Microsoft's recent plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox – but according to the company, The Elder Scrolls 6 is still chugging along just fine.

The studio reveals as much in quite a lengthy new post over on Twitter, confirming that The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently Bethesda's primary focus – and the developers feel pretty confident about the new RPG, too. That and the next Fallout game, which we now know is for sure happening.

"Our teams are now developing The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 on Creation Engine 3, a shared technology platform we've been building since Starfield's launch," writes Bethesda. "It allows our teams to support multiple projects simultaneously with new tools, rendering, and systems that define our games."

This lines up with what we know about Bethesda's in-house engine – Todd Howard said the devs are "very happy where the tech is and where it's going" early this year, describing how Bethesda has "handled" the new Creation Engine "better than we ever have" thanks to lessons learned from Starfield.

The studio's current thread continues, describing where the new Fallout and Elder Scrolls are in terms of development.

"Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction. The Elder Scrolls 6 is our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise. With over 65 million copies sold, players are still exploring Skyrim 15 years later, but we know it's been a very long wait for the sequel."

That's an understatement – but Bethesda's words here are reassuring nonetheless. It has been well over a decade since Skyrim changed the RPG genre forever, leaving us all craving the next Elder Scrolls, after all.

But, as the studio confirms, "The next chapter is on the way. We're where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day."

It's bittersweet, with all things considered – especially amid all of the layoffs. The company's union representatives reported a big loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers, and testers," which would imply quite the impact on development.

Devs affected by the layoffs also said that making new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games would "be harder than ever now" following Microsoft's Xbox cuts, so... yeah.

Here's hoping Bethesda truly is cooking with The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, and that former devs land on their feet, too.

Elder Scrolls Online is "not going to be able to put out the amount of content at the speed" it was, former dev says following Xbox layoffs.

Ex-The Elder Scrolls Online senior encounter designer Morgan Goin was one of the devs let go from Zenimax Online Studios and says she can't see how the studio can maintain the same cadence of updates going forward.

Microsoft kicked off its fifth batch of layoffs since spending $75 billion on acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023. Since then Microsoft has effectively had yearly layoffs each July, with Zenimax Online Studios – which was hit in a major way last year's layoffs, resulting in the cancellation of Project Blackbird and several high-profile departures from the company – being one of the biggest hits for of this year's wave alongside Doom developer id Software, as up to half of the devs behind Bethesda's MMO have reportedly lost their jobs.

While Bethesda did try to damage control this somewhat with a statement saying its team is the same size as in 2015, devs are painting a different story. Speaking to BBC News, Goin says she was "blindsided" by the sheer number of cuts and estimates that some disciplines at the studio have been reduced to a quarter of their pre-layoffs size. Goin adds, "We're not going to be able to put out the amount of content at the speed that we were… or anything approaching that."

Andrew Young, a senior content designer on Elder Scrolls Online from 2012 until 2024, said the MMO "basically funded other failing projects." While nothing specific was mentioned, The Elder Scrolls Blades and Legends didn't exactly light the world on fire, but it could be in reference to any number of underperforming Zenimax titles (two bad Wolfenstein spinoffs releasing on the same day, anyone?).

Like with last year's layoffs, Zenimax Online Studios is losing several high-profile staff as a result of this year's cuts, with studio head Joseph Burba, Elder Scrolls Online executive producer Susan Kath, studio game director Rich Lambert, and production director Ala Diaz all reportedly leaving the company.

Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"

You should always remember that whatever service you use to back up anything, something could go wrong and your data could be lost. This is what happened to streamer Joshua Khane, who couldn't access years' worth of games and photos of precious memories after Microsoft shut down his OneDrive account.

He posted what was happening on July 14, on Twitter. "Microsoft DELETED my account AND OneDrive!!?? After ACKNOWLEDGING that I’m the owner of the account and that it was compromised???" he says.

"25 fucking years of data, thousands of euros spended [sic] on games??" he adds. "My son’s baby pictures? GONE!"

Included is a screenshot of communication from Microsoft. It opens with confirmation that "unauthorized access occurred" and that "security information on your account" had been changed. As such, the whole thing was "permanently suspended," rendering his OneDrive inaccessible.

That's it - everything, totally unavailable with zero recourse, just like that. Ain't the future grand? Khane's post started to gain traction, and Xbox has since reached out to remedy the situation.

"We’re sorry this happened, it’s not the experience we want anyone to have when their account is compromised," the Xbox Support Twitter account tells him. "We have been working to restore access to your purchases and reached out with the next steps."

So far, this is the last communication between them. These situations are difficult because, on Microsoft's side, defenses are built to protect users and their data, to the point of completely locking down files and information in the event of a hack or unauthorized access.

Anecdotally, I once lost everything on a phone because the pattern was entered incorrectly too many times while it was being jostled in my pocket. Eventually, a wall comes up, because the assumption is someone may be up to no good, and it's better to do a full lockdown than risk letting a bad character in.

On the back of Sony discontinuing physical discs, this is a firm reminder that your digital libraries can be fickle. Circumstances outside of your control can render your collection null and void. A nightmare, but at least Khale's gotten traction on social media, and there may be recourse within the bowels of Microsoft.

Xbox layoffs claim leadership of Elder Scrolls Online studio ZeniMax, including a 14-year veteran who was only appointed to run the studio last July

Bethesda Game Studios – and, in particular, ZeniMax Online Studios – have felt the impact of Microsoft's recent plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox, with the company's union representatives reporting a loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

It's no secret that the layoffs have torn through Bethesda and its Elder Scrolls Online studio, which has been hit particularly hard.

An MMO team that grew over time to quite mind-boggling figures has now been reduced to the same size it boasted over a decade ago, leaving remaining developers – and fans – concerned about the future. Those affected didn't just include devs, however… leadership has faced the chopping block, too, apparently.

We learn as much from Game File, which reportedly obtained a copy of the official notice from ZeniMax Online Studios regarding its plans to "transition" to new leadership "over the next few months" – leadership that consists of company veterans.

Leads departing include studio head Joseph Burba (who has a 14-year history at the company and was just appointed to his role last July), Elder Scrolls Online executive producer Susan Kath, studio game director Rich Lambert, and production director Ala Diaz.

They "will remain in place during the transition period to help ensure a smooth handoff," however.

As for who will step in to take the helm, head of business operations Joshua Henderson will run ZeniMax Online Studios alongside Nick Giacomini, who was just promoted to Elder Scrolls Online game director last August.

In their statement, the former leaders note that they predict "growth" for the MMO.

"We have tremendous confidence in Josh and Nick," they write, "the future of this studio, and the continued growth of ESO. With exciting experiences still ahead for our players as we wrap up work for Update 51 and beyond, we believe that your passion, creativity, and commitment to each other and the community will continue serving as the heartbeat of ESO."

It's bittersweet – especially after some 200+ losses at the studio.

Here's hoping that the affected developers are able to land on their feet, and ZeniMax Online Studios can pick up the pieces somehow – these certainly aren't easy times in the industry, and the impact is more evident than ever.

Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"

The past couple of weeks have been undeniably difficult for the video game industry, with Microsoft's plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox affecting various in-progress titles and studios – one of which is id Software, the team behind Doom.

In fact, id Software producer Andrew Willis has spoken at length about the layoffs and their impact across the board. A few days ago, he called them "incomprehensible," saying that small worker-owned studios are "the only path forward" from here.

Since then, he's continued to share his thoughts over on LinkedIn, writing, "The games industry must change if it is going to create art and franchises that have long-term sustainable value."

As the producer states, "Right now, it feels like the monopolies that control it are simply trying to extract as much goodwill and value (that took decades to build) as they can with little concern for the diminishing returns it's leading to. This is what happens when the people who control it (most Ivy League MBAs) do not play games, have never shipped a game, and fundamentally do not understand the industry they manage."

Willis then says, "You'll never get another WoW or Morrowind in the current climate" – a statement I can't help but feel rings especially true right now.

It's difficult to imagine such impactful games releasing when so many developers are struggling to mitigate the blow that widespread layoffs are leaving in their wake… and according to the producer, a lot of the issues stem from improper management.

"One thing that drives me nuts while watching the games industry be mismanaged is how everyone is looking for these massive 10x returns but is so focused on short-term growth that they essentially kill the goose before it can start laying eggs," as he explains.

"Disbanding and destroying a team after just one commercial letdown… makes it so you won't ever have a group that learns from their mistakes and perfects their next attempt (see Helldivers 2)."

With such quick trigger-pulling, Willis says studios will "never get that breakout success" they're after.

"These people would've turned down funding for George Lucas, Walt Disney, etc., and they wonder why they can't establish another colossal IP that pays dividends for decades. It's mind-boggling. There is lots wrong with the game industry, but I believe that one of the main things is that the people who manage it today have no idea how it actually works and refuse to learn or listen to the people that do."

The producer cites how wild it is to see spending on hardware and software go up, but layoffs never settling.

"It's really amazing how demand and consumer spending on video games continues to increase year over year, and yet the supply side continues to be extremely volatile for employees," he describes. "The failure to connect these two sides in a way that creates sustainable growth points to a direct failure of executive leadership – the consequences of which are only suffered by workers."

Willis signs off with one final thought: "The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the executive management class that controls the video game industry is so severely inept that they have somehow failed everyone all at once in every aspect – the shareholders, the consumers, the employees, and anyone who cares about games. They tried to sacrifice quality for profit, and they didn't even manage to generate the latter. Abysmal choices."

I'm inclined to agree with Willis on his point about a "breakout success" in this climate – it feels near impossible. Here's hoping the industry is able to heal a bit over time, and that we see less news regarding mass layoffs, too.

Layoffs might offer "better short-term financial results," late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted in 2013, but "employees who fear that they may be laid off" will never produce the same results

Following the news of Microsoft's plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox, analysts predict that the company's next-generation console won't do as well as PlayStation's – yet again.

The new predictions come straight from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan (as per GamesIndustry.biz), with its analysis first looking back at the past – and current – market.

"For now, the market faces a compounding problem: hardware that is either too old or too expensive for the median consumer, a software slate that is thin outside a handful of tentpole releases, and a macro environment that keeps any meaningful price relief off the table."

That checks out. Between the RAM shortages and Sony's announcement regarding its plan to axe physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting in 2028, it's not looking great for consoles. All of this, coupled with an "unhealthy Xbox," as the Microsoft gaming brand's CEO Asha Sharma dubs it, proves as much.
Nonetheless, S&P's console forecast works out what sales Sony and Xbox might see in the future – even if they're not as impressive.

Starting with Sony, the analysis notes that the PlayStation 5's own sales have dipped, and "S&P expects shipments to decline further" this year. The recent PlayStation 5 price increase, which saw the base console rise to $650 and Pro to a whopping $900, isn't helping.

We are talking about a "six-year-old device," as S&P puts it – and the analysts aren't sure big launches like GTA 6 are enough to make up for this price gap.

"That framing does not inspire confidence for 2027 or beyond."

Still, S&P's "forecast models a potential PlayStation 6 launch in 2028, contributing four million units in its first year and scaling to 17.2 million by 2030." Those figures might not look like all that much, especially when taking the Nintendo Switch 2 and its 17 million sales into account, but they're a whole lot better than what S&P thinks Xbox might see around the same time.

The firm predicts the next Xbox console – codenamed Project Helix – will sell about two million units in its first year post-launch, rising to just 7.3 million by 2030. That's… a lot smaller a figure than the 17.2 million S&P thinks the PlayStation 6 might hit.

But, as the analysis notes, "The actual outcome could look very different. A fully open PC platform with Xbox branding would not really resemble a console and likely not be counted in this model."

It concludes: "Our forecast is functionally splitting the difference between a proper Xbox successor and an Xbox-certification program with PC OEMs, and readers should treat the post-2027 Microsoft trajectory as a range of outcomes contingent on decisions yet to be made or revealed."

That makes sense, I suppose. After all, we don't know too much about Project Helix, and Xbox has been hard on its journey to bridge the gap between console and PC.

Should the new Xbox, whatever it may look like, sell that much less than its PlayStation counterpart, though… I'm not sure how things will play out on either end.

After "incomprehensible" Xbox layoffs, id Software producer says worker-owned studios are "the only path forward."

id Software producer Andrew Willis can only see one way through the Microsoft mess as the company begins executing its plans to bulldoze 3,200 jobs at Xbox: studios owned by workers, rather than executives who don't mind setting fire to, say, 3,200 jobs.

Willis mourned the layoffs – which already impacted 136 of id Software's total 185 staff members – in a LinkedIn post earlier this week, calling the layoffs an "incomprehensible decision," and remarking that "the game industry is being run by people who do not fundamentally understand anything about it, not even how it generates value or profit." He's decided in a new post, then, that "the only way to fix the video game industry at this point is for developer owned studios to start rising from these studio closures and layoffs."

Doom studio id Software, of course, was originally created by Doom's developers in 1991, but Willis also seems in favor of true worker cooperatives where all of a business' employees double as owners who can guide direction. A co-op is not impervious to problems – worker-owned Dead Cells developer Motion Twin had a public falling out with the game's lead dev after a disagreement in 2024, for example – but I think many people would prefer interpersonal drama to receiving an email from a CEO you've never met informing you that something like 3,531,840 more people in your field have just been laid off.

So, Willis, who also helped lead id Software's unionization efforts in 2025, says, "We've got to learn from the past, be fiscally responsibly, and create an environment of sustainable growth (though growth should be a byproduct of success, not a goal in and of itself)."

"Its the only path forward I can see," he reiterates. "These large publishers and monopolies have proven themselves terrible stewards and somehow even worse financial managers." To his point, although Microsoft Gaming had already eliminated 2,500 jobs in 2024, and Microsoft killed about 15,000 more jobs in 2025, Xbox began 2026 with its overall revenue 9% down in a hole.

"If the people who create the value own that value, good things will follow," Willis concludes. Makes sense to me.

Microsoft lays off Bethesda vet behind Todd Howard's "crazy" Fallout 4 idea, "too many Skyrim weapons to count," the Dwemer, and Mudcrabs – and he may leave games altogether.

The Elder Scrolls Online team is unfortunately part of Microsoft's ongoing plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox, leaving the developers behind the Bethesda MMO far fewer in number than before.

In fact, the team is apparently as small as it was about a decade ago, when the game only really began to take off after its shaky launch – or, at least, that's what prominent community figure Baratron, who helps run the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages and its Discord, reports.

He reveals as much in a new message, explaining that he learned the news from associate design director Jason Barnes and associate director of community management Jessica Folsom.

It came during the past weekend's Elder Scrolls Online Tavern event in Hesse, Germany, where fans and developers gathered to celebrate the MMO.

"This is important," writes Baratron. "According to both Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) and Jessica Folsom (Associate Director of Community Management), Zenimax Online Studios is now at the same size as it was when they made both Wrothgar and Summerset."

That's shocking, to say the least – but he doesn't seem to think it's a bad thing. After all, "both are highly acclaimed DLCs," as the UESP admin puts it. "So while the layoffs are extremely upsetting for everyone involved (of course including players), this is not necessarily the end of new content or the game going into maintenance mode."

Baratron assures that there's more reason to think the end of Elder Scrolls Online isn't near, too.

"Also Nick Giacomini (Game Director) and Susan Kath (Studio Executive Producer) are specifically not at the ESO Tavern because they're working on the new Roadmap of when content will be released," he states. "It really is not the end yet."

It's a bit of bittersweet, good-and-bad news, all things considered – the layoffs, obviously, are not nice to hear about… but it's reassuring that they don't spell the demise of the MMO.

Here's hoping any and all affected developers are able to land on their feet, and The Elder Scrolls Online proves to have a brighter future than fans expect following the upsetting news circulating recently.

"There's really no one left": Former Elder Scrolls Online dev says the MMO "basically funded other failing projects" as Microsoft guts the studio

Obsidian Entertainment is one of several prolific studios affected by Xbox's layoffs, with job losses and reportedly substantial changes to its release slate. After taking some time to consider his response, the co-director of The Outer Worlds 2 has publicly commented on what's going on and has some choice words for anyone spreading unsubstantiated rumors.

"This has been an extremely difficult week at Obsidian," Brandon Adler, who's now directing an unannounced project at Obsidian, writes on LinkedIn. "Not only have I had to say goodbye to some amazing game developers, but I've had to say goodbye to some of my best friends. I truly feel for every one of them. Know that if you are looking to hire one of these former Obsidian devs, you are hiring some of the best people around - both professionally and personally."

He then takes aim at the "cold take artists" who've been commenting and speculating about the current landscape and atmosphere at Obsidian. "The number of times I've seen people, with no understanding of who has worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian isn't who they used to be... is staggering. Most of the time they are not just wrong, but spreading an enormous amount of misinformation."

He goes on to mention that current higher-ups are people who worked on major Obsidian releases such as Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds. "The through line from Knights of the Old Republic 2 to our current games is pretty clear," he adds.

"Is Obsidian the same as it was 20 years ago? No, of course not. Nothing stays the same," Adler says. "But the DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was. The same DNA that created Knights of the Old Republic, New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, and South Park: The Stick of Truth."

Two things can be true at once: Obsidian's lost a considerable amount of talent due to changes imposed by Microsoft, and there are still plenty of seasoned devs working away at the studio. The future is uncertain, even with the prospect of a new Fallout, and I believe it's important to acknowledge the real and true difficulties of the current climate for the company and Xbox's development teams as a whole.

"I'm extremely proud of our history and I am also excited for who we have become," Adler says to finish. "Just remember, when you are seeing people spouting off about Obsidian, running their mouths about who we are now vs. what we were then, you are listening to someone crow about something with zero insight into how a game is made and who contributed to our previous games."

Obsidian reportedly safe from Xbox studio closures despite fears the RPG powerhouse was in negotiations to avoid shutdown

Microsoft communications lead Frank Shaw says the 1,600 Xbox employees recently cut at the start of a layoff wave which will hit 3,200 jobs by the end of the fiscal year were not laid off to be replaced with H-1B visa foreign workers.

Seemingly heading off reports that falsely conflated plans for Microsoft to hire H-1B visa employees with the Xbox layoffs, Shaw says in a striking Twitter post, "Lots of bad information out there --let's clear it up."

Echoing Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Shaw reiterates, "Recent workforce changes were made to restructure the XBOX business because it is not healthy." He is quick to stress that, "They were not made to replace employees with foreign workers."

Shaw says "the H-1B figures being referenced are Microsoft-wide visa renewals and new hire applications. They are not specific to XBOX and represent a small percentage of Microsoft's overall workforce. And the majority of roles impacted were not American roles."

These initial Xbox layoffs hit multiple teams and studios around the world, with four studios already shed and Dishonored maker Arkane Lyon in talks over divestment options, and the likes of id Software and Bethesda feeling heavy losses of their own.

The H-1B visa program has faced additional scrutiny under the Trump administration, with AP reporting 2025 plans to overhaul the program. Matthew Tragesser, US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said in December that the program had been "exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers."

Shaw insists, "XBOX is the largest employer of American workers in the gaming industry and the largest American gaming company."

Dismissing apparent criticism of Sharma, who was appointed to a new Federal Reserve job task force the very week she oversaw the dissolution of 3,200 jobs, Shaw adds, "And Asha is an American born, raised, and educated CEO, from Wisconsin."

The Elder Scrolls 6 will be hurt and potentially delayed by Xbox layoffs, Bethesda devs expect: "This has had a crushing effect on morale."

The Xbox reset announced on July 6 is the biggest, most controversial restructure in the Microsoft division's history. The broad strokes are simple: Xbox is cutting 3,200 jobs, 1,600 of them being immediate layoffs, in a spate of studio spin-outs and redundancies off the back of low profit margins. The company has become unhealthy, according to CEO Asha Sharma, with the restructure aimed at "reset[ting] our content portfolio".

Basically, Xbox is paring back its output to its highest-earning franchises and will be rerouting money and people into them. But with each new day bringing more numbers, outrage, and insights into Sharma's "Resetting Xbox" announcement, I can't be the only one who feels the picture is getting foggier by the hour.

Here, I'm going to go through everything we know so far about the Xbox restructure, from the studios being sold back to themselves as independent developers to the layoffs and consultancy periods we know of right now. I'll touch on how Xbox managed to get here in the first place, and what the reset might mean for all the upcoming Xbox Series X games now that development teams have been cut or divested entirely.

Layoffs

Xbox announced 1,600 immediate "role eliminations" in the first stage of its reset, with the majority coming from ZeniMax studios Bethesda, ZeniMax Online, and id Software, with further instant cuts made at Obsidian.

After receiving a notice from the Texan Workforce Committee, Game Developer reported that 136 jobs in total have been cut from id Software, with a further 22 being made at Bethesda Game Works. This brings us to 158 job losses under the ZeniMax umbrella at the time of writing.

Studio exits

As part of the Xbox Reset, CEO Asha Sharma has announced that four Microsoft-owned studios "will leave Xbox to new management," meaning they are to be sold and will no longer be part of Xbox's in-house developer cohort. In addition, Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Deathloop, Redfall) has entered "required consultation" in Lyon, France, to decide the developer's future.

The four Xbox studios being sold as part of the reset are:

1. Compulsion Games (We Happy Few, South of Midnight)
2. Double Fine (Psychonauts, Psychonauts 2)
3. Ninja Theory (Hellblade, Hellblade 2)
4. Undead Labs (State of Decay, State of Decay 2)

What does the reset mean for future Xbox games?

With the Xbox reset impacting multiple studios with games either in active or conceptual development, the severity will depend upon whether the teams have been cut or the studios themselves sold on.

As Compulsion and Double Fine are being sold back to themselves as independent developers, each will leave Xbox with " their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games" intact according to Sharma's announcement.

Compulsion confirmed in a post on Blue Sky that it will keep the rights to games shipped under Xbox, including last year's dreamy South of Midnight, and Double Fine reiterated that it will also regain full rights to its back catalogue too.

Meanwhile, it looks like Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will retain "funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3" after being divested and sold off to new management. Senua was only recently announced at Summer Game Fest 2026, and State of Decay 3 has been in development for six years and is finally slated to launch in February 2027. It also leaves another question in the air: whether State of Decay 3 will launch on Game Pass at all, let alone on day one, now that Undead Labs is splitting from Xbox.

Aside from slashing its workface, another goal of the Xbox reset is to course-correct the division's poor profit margin by reinvesting time and manpower into flagship franchises. This means Obsidian has had to scrap plans for Avowed 2 altogether, allegedly working on a new Fallout game instead. Off the back of that, Bethesda will continue working on The Elder Scrolls 6 as one of the key tentpole franchises remaining under Xbox, while there's been no mention of Fable 4 developer Playground Games in any of the announcements so far.

Most intriguing to me right now is what will become of Marvel's Blade, which is in development at Arkane. Xbox has revealed very little about Arkane's "required consultation" period, including whether it intends to make redundancies or sell the studio off entirely, so I'll have to get back to you on that one.

As for why any of this was necessary in the first place, I've already touched on the lack of profitability Xbox is experiencing at the moment. But according to Reuters, Microsoft is axing 4,800 jobs across the whole company ("more than 2% of their global workforce") to finance its AI spending. It seems Xbox is just bearing the brunt of that figure. AI is one of Microsoft's biggest interests at the moment, and with Xbox boss Sharma announcing her role as an "external advisor" to the US Federal Reserve on "productivity and jobs" in the wake of AI technologies, it's all starting to sound a little circular.

The axe is swinging around Xbox at the moment, as hundreds of jobs have already been cut across Microsoft's game studios. Of the teams impacted, id Software's reportedly been substantially hit, to the point that there's apparently only one single person left working on the id Tech engine.

This comes from a report by Kotaku which goes into the changes at the legendary studio. Sources tell the outlet that id Tech is now a department of one following the latest redundancies. The engine is bespoke technology to the company and has been the backbone of the Quake, Wolfenstein and Doom games since the mid-'90s.

"The institutional knowledge is just not there. id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever," a person familiar with the situation says.

Although the engine was mostly for in-house games, it had been used elsewhere, such as in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from MachineGames, and in both The Evil Within installments from Tango Gameworks. Really, though, it's the implementation in the modern Doom games that garnered the most praise.

The bouncy, punchy power fantasy of Doom 2016, Eternal, and The Dark Ages comes from the engine and how confidently id Software was able to use it. These are all among the finest first-person shooters of the last 20 years, and to see people integral to them be treated this way is just sad.

It's noted that id Software has a European office based in Frankfurt, and there's a chance some people there may be drafted in to help maintain id Tech. But that's speculation for now, as direct communication on these issues remains limited for now as companies reel from the sudden changes.

As of now, Obsidian, id Software, Bethesda and more have reportedly been significantly affected by job losses and other changes. Apparently, no projects are currently greenlit at id Software, leaving the outfit in a state of flux for the time-being.

After 37 years at Microsoft, veteran who led Xbox Backward Compatibility program has been laid off: "I look forward to watching how Xbox evolves going forward."