Gears of War: E-Day remembers the golden years of multiplayer shooters that didn't double as undercover cosmetic storefronts, and it's promising a throwback experience where almost every piece of customization will be earnable by playing online matches. What an idea! But don't worry about grinding endlessly for in-game currency, the devs apparently aren't going down EA's "pride and accomplishment" route.

The Coalition today dived deep into Gears of War: E-Day's multiplayer portions – the Horde mode that pits 12 players against waves of subterranean beasties and the Versus mode that includes sweaty 4v4 PvP matches. While the multiplayer looked great, what really got my chainsaw-guns revved up was the talk of how The Coalition is ditching the seedier parts of modern online shooters.

"Remember the good ol' days when you bought a game and you could unlock all the customization items just by playing because you already bought the game? Us too! So, when it comes to growing your own collection of customization items in E-Day, we've taken a more old-school inspired approach," the devs write in a lengthy new blog post.

"Nearly every single item in Gears of War: E-Day can be earned by simply playing the game. That means no battle pass, no tour of duty, no gimmicks, no bullshit. Whether it's a Legendary Character Skin, an Epic Weapon Skin Set or a Rare Pose, almost all of it can be earned through gameplay," it adds.

According to the studio, the only exceptions to this rule are items included in the Premium Edition of the game, pay-only bundles that raise money for charity, and collaboration content like an incoming weapon skin set inspired by Metallica. That aside, you'll be able to earn in-game coins after online matches, by levelling up, or by "unlocking many of the medals from our Gears 3-inspired medal system."

The Coalition seems keen to avoid a Star Wars: Battlefront 2 type of disaster, though: "Now to address the Brumak in the room, earning coins is not intended to be painstaking or provide the player with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Earning Coins shouldn't be an arduous grind. Chasing your favorite skin and unlocking new items should be fun. As such, we've carefully tuned the rate you earn Coins with this principle in-mind and we'll pay close attention to player feedback to adjust as necessary in post-launch."

In case you've forgotten about the almost decade-old controversy, EA found itself in hot water when Star Wars Battlefront 2 fans complained about how unlocking certain characters could take upwards of 40 hours. EA's response? They wanted to give folks a "sense of pride and accomplishment" in having spent literal days to play as Darth Vader. It's still Reddit's most downvoted comment.

Here's hoping The Coalition's promises land true when Gears of War: E-Day comes to PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 6. A multiplayer open beta kicks off for pre-orderers and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers between August 6-10, before opening up to everyone between August 13-17.

In the meantime, check out the best co-op games to play right now.

Clockwork Revolution, the BioShock-esque RPG underway from Fallout veterans like Brian Fargo over at inXile, is not merely a shooter – and if that's what you're hoping to get out of it, then look elsewhere.

Or, at least, that's what inXile says in response to folks who want a more action-packed time out of Clockwork Revolution than a story-led experience.

The developer makes this clear in a new online post, responding to a fan critical of the RPG's… well, RPG-ness. Heck, the team even goes as far as suggesting that anyone unhappy with Clockwork Revolution leaning into its genre's narrative elements play shooters like Doom instead.

"Clockwork is a deep RPG with crunchy systems; mature and intertwining narrative; far-reaching reactivity to your choices; interesting characters; great music; insane world building; and YES, with great gunplay and awesome time powers," the studio writes.

"But if you want a pure run and gun shooter, might we recommend Doom? Hear great things." In the comments, inXile alludes to Gears of War: E-Day as an option, too. "Ooh, or the new Gears that looks real good too," the dev adds. "Lots of options."

As for what inXile was responding to in the first place, it all stems from a discussion over on Steam, in which it outlined how "Clockwork is a deep, narrative RPG, with complex character creation, skill trees, perks, traits, weapon customization, inventory systems, gear, etc." and is "first and foremost a dialogue and conversation-rich roleplaying game."

That's where a prospective fan replied that they were disappointed to learn that.

"Forgive me, but what you describe just sounds like a bunch of endless number twiddling followed by a lot of talk-talk-talk-talk-talk (and if modern gaming convention follows, we can expect about 8 minutes of unskippable cutscenes for every 3 mouse clicks)," their comment reads. "I'll wait and see how it comes out, but I'm certainly less enthusiastic about it now."

Honestly, it sounds like inXile might be right here – they'd probably be better off playing something like Doom if they're more fond of fast-paced, blood-pumping gameplay than story.

That's not to say that Clockwork Revolution won't have any combat, of course. Much like BioShock, there's first-person shooting involved. It just won't take center stage, as it's still an RPG at its core… and quite frankly, I'm good with that.

Fallout veteran Brian Fargo says "I LOATHE companions that point out the obvious," and that's why his new RPG won't feature an annoying sidekick.

Even the best online multiplayer games aren't firing on all cylinders all the time. In fact, I'd argue that's what makes their best moments standout – the clutch sniper nest you establish to help your team make a comeback in Black Ops 7, finally clawing back some rounds in Tekken 8 from a random player who for that evening has become your absolute nemesis, the (for some of us) rare, glittering Victory Royale in Fortnite.

The same holds true for Gears of War: E-Day's newest mode – Horde Siege – which I've been playing in early access, which at times feels like Gears as you've never played it before. At others, the same old. But, the attempt to craft these moments across large-scale player-versus-environment co-operative play is ambitious enough to be worth a respectful hat tip. Three squads of four players battle locusts across a stonking massive district of Kalona City while clearing a checklist of activities before battling to safely extract.

City boy

Gears of War E-Day's Horde Siege vision comes together when these squads collide, interacting across their different objectives to make it really feel like the city has burst into war. A few of your squad's goals may have you circling the edge of the district, before all at once lines moving through the city intersect with those of other players, bullets fly, and hulking groups of locusts all converge as well.

Kalona City, even as it's being reduced to rubble, is gorgeous – bringing to life the mix of brutalism and futurism that so characterizes what remains of civilization in the Gears games set after this prequel (E-Day, 'Emergence Day', is when the world is rocked by a locust invasion from beneath the earth). Gears of War: E-Day's single-player campaign is set entirely within Kalona City, aiming to ground this disastrous first incursion with a real sense of place. The same seems to be true of Horde Siege, maps centering on districts so large it's easy to barely see players not in your squad during large chunks of play. (There's one district in my hands-on, but there will be three maps at launch).

All this is to say that the map design is incredibly open, and the unpredictable nature of how other squads are moving through it means battle lines can feel like they emerge anywhere. If the match was only catering for to squad, you'd have a good idea of how to move through, say, a courtyard, while making effective use of cover. But when another squad is coming from a different direction with the same idea, things can get messy. Yet, thanks to the overall co-operative nature, alliances come naturally, firefights ebbing and flowing between units all driven by the same goal to wipe out locusts and get out of there intact in order to do it all over again.

Gears of War: E-Day marks a rare case where I'm more curious about the multiplayer than the campaign. I remain a bit grumpy about fleshing out the titular E-Day, as I think the still-incredible first Gears of War handles its gritty, sci-fi worldbuilding almost immaculately.

But, I'm not so cold-hearted that the prospect of a back-to-fundamentals approach to Gears doesn't appeal (I vastly prefer the original trilogy to the later games), and I can rock more with the idea of E-Day being a backdrop to multiplayer scenarios than I really need to have my 'Solo explaining Han Solo's name' moment with Marcus Fenix and the iconic lancer chainsaw rifle.

Which doesn't mean Gears of War E-Day's Horde Siege multiplayer is without flaw (for clarity, I only played this mode – not Versus). For all the moments where Kalona City comes alive with converging squads, there are many more when it doesn't, and I'm left with just my squad defending a point from oncoming Locusts, and the action doesn't feel all that evolved from my recent replay of Gears of War Reloaded.

Shifting gears

Gunplay, once meaty, feels sedate in these more modest encounters, with bullets glancing off enemies like they don't feel it as they plod directly for cover, almost ignoring I'm there. (Executions, though, are delightfully brutal). I'm not sure if this is a consequence of Horde Siege's sheer scale – combat looked more tactile in the campaign footage I've seen. After all, even when two other squads are duking it out on the other side of the map to me, they're still there.

Some of this is also the case in Reloaded, but there I can excuse it because it's a remaster of a game from 2006, and constant splurges of gore to cap off kills are frequent. Here, draining whole clips into locusts, I'm conscious of the fact I'm not seeing the chunks of them flying I'd like to see. Perhaps, also, I'm spoiled by the excellent Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, where co-op encounters felt considerably meatier – though I understand that Space Marine 2's encounters are more tightly crafted than the sprawling scale of E-Day's Horde Siege. Whatever the case, it's true that Gears has more meathead gore-blasting competition now than it did back in the day.

I'm not sure what the solution is other than to see how Gears of War E-Day's Horde Siege mode performs once it's out in the wild. There's a chance squads run into each other more frequently than in my experience, and it feels more electric as a result. As it stands, those moments where Horde Siege shine are few and far between, and rather than feeling like exemplar moments that make the build-up worth it, I'm left soaking enemies with whole clips while I wish it was happening more often.

There's definitely solid craft within what I've played of Gears of War E-Day so far, but I'm struggling to really get a sense of overall intention. Did I mention you can jump at any point now? No, I didn't, because it seems – at least here – relatively pointless. You can slide constantly now as well, which I can see getting annoying much as it did in Modern Warfare 3. The variable cover size is a nice touch, the tutorial having me crawl along small bits of rubble on my back. But, in what I play in Horde Siege, it's still all waist high cover still rules the day.

Alongside Halo: Campaign Evolved, Gears of War: E-Day is yearning for the past, much as I'm sure Xbox is as it enacts thousands of lay-offs across some of its best-in-class development studios, has become the target of boycotts, and is staring down the barrel of massively inflated hardware prices thanks to the component crisis. But, I'm not yet convinced E-Day or Xbox fully understand what made its historic moments work. The same old can never be entirely new, and while Horde Siege can feel special, too much of the time I'm left grasping for reasons to play another match, especially when Versus mode is right there.

But what about you? Looking forwards to returning to Gears' online offerings when E-Day launches? Let us know in the comments!

Take a look at our best co-op games ranking for more!

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.

Euphoria star Hunter Schafer has revealed she's recently performed in mocap for Hideo Kojima's upcoming horror game OD.

Despite knowing about the upcoming Hideo Kojima games for a while now, we really don't know all that much about either of them. We do know that horror title OD will be first up to the plate, with the game being announced at The Game Awards 2023, but – despite a very naked gameplay leak a year before the game was announced – Kojima claimed his studio was just beginning to work on OD last year. We did get our second trailer last year, while Kojima is hyping it up as a game that goes "beyond the limit of 'scariness."

Well, we now have a slight update on the production of OD, as Schafer – when speaking to IGN at SDCC 2026 – says working OD "was a lot of fun" and that she "just did mocap not too long ago."

Schafer also says "that was my first experience doing motion capture," adding that she loves "how much imagination is involved in filming something like that." She notes: "I just think Hideo's a genius and so lovely to work with"

Beyond that, Schafer speaks about the games she's been playing, calling The Last of Us Part 2 "life-changing," and revealing she has recently played Journey, which she describes as "really simple and gorgeous."

For comparison, Death Stranding 2 motion capture was completed in May 2024, and took just over a year to release from that point. So, come time for The Game Awards this year, I'd suspect (or hope) we might find out a bit more about OD, and have a better idea of what it is and when it's releasing.

Hideo Kojima isn't planning to blast off to space yet because he doesn't want to rush to his "ultimate dream," so he'll "keep on making games" for now.

Halo: Campaign Evolved might be a remake of one of the best shooters to ever do it, but that doesn't mean it's entirely bullet proof. On Steam, the remake has debuted to an average 'Mixed' rating thanks to player complaints of crashes and server login issues that temporarily stopped people from playing the campaign-only game.

For context, Halo: Campaign Evolved launches in full on July 28, but owners of the $70/£70 Premium Edition get to skip the queue and jump in five days early. Despite paying extra, those fans have maybe been given the short end of the stick if user reviews are anything to go by.

At the time of writing, about 32% of Campaign Evolved's 1,666 Steam user reviews give it the thumbs down, with many reviews citing semi-frequent crashes and problems even connecting to the game's servers in the first place.

"Yes the game just came out, but it shouldn't be a trend for a game to always come out severely broken," one player writes. "Call me a boomer, but I miss when games came out in a playable state without patches needed."

"Login failed," another states. "Cannot play the single-player game as servers are overloaded. Screw your DRM." Halo Studios actually responded to that user review by promising that login issues should now be fixed, and judging by the almost 20 hours the fan has on record, it seems server issues are a non-issue for now.

Still, some other fans took issue with the fact that Halo: Campaign Evolved requires a login and a connection at all. The game is playable start-to-finish in online co-op, but there's no real reason why Spartans who prefer to go in solo should have to connect their Microsoft accounts before even reaching the main menu.

Technical issues and a bumpy launch aside, players who aren't being interrupted by crashes seem otherwise happy with the classic game's second remake.

"Finished the prequel missions. Barely any problems whatsoever, and so far it's been refreshing playing a "new" Halo game again," one fans says of the new three-mission arc.

"Well – it's Halo 1's campaign, but with a new coat of paint on top and some interesting and fun tweaks to mix up the gameplay, with the most comprehensive set of skulls the series has ever seen that offer tons of replay value," a second player explains. "Really, that's all I think needs to be said to justify the recommendation here."

GamesRadar's Halo: Campaign Evolved review had similarly good things to say about the remake, even if the package as a whole also felt like "a wasted opportunity for Halo Studios to put its own spin on a classic."

Want more? A secret Halo: Campaign Evolved ending strongly hints that another Halo 2 remake is in the works – "See you in the sequel."

Halo: Campaign Evolved strongly hints that another Halo remake could be on the way.

Rumors have been swirling for a while that Halo Studios is planning to remake Master Chief's entire original trilogy – Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 – in the same style as its newly-released revamp, Halo: Campaign Evolved. That means yes to sprint, no to multiplayer, and sweeping changes to the rest of the game (new levels, weapons, updated visuals, etc.)

For anyone crossing their fingers for Halo 2 and Halo 3 to get the same treatment, good news! Halo: Campaign Evolved rather explicitly pours fuel over the fire of those rumors in its secret ending, unlocked by completing the game on Legendary difficulty. (Don't worry, there's no hard spoilers here.)

Finishing the fight on the game's toughest difficulty rewards you with an alternative ending that's surprisingly different to Bungie's 2001 shooter. The part that's important here is a line uttered by our good old Sergeant Avery Johnson, who caps off the entire game with: "See you in the sequel!"

While that's not hard confirmation of a Halo 2 remake in itself, the implication is crystal clear since an inevitable Halo 7 isn't exactly a sequel to Halo: Campaign Evolved, and I doubt HD Johnson is telling folks to go back and play the original Halo 2 after the series' latest remake.

Halo 2 has also actually been remade once before in Halo 2 Anniversary, which came bundled with The Master Chief Collection, but that was the case with the series' first game too, so it's not exactly a deal breaker for Xbox Game Studios.

The iconic Xbox sequel was also infamously a victim of a turbulent development cycle that left tons of content on the cutting room floor. The "finishing this fight" line became so recognizable in the first place because Master Chief did not, in fact, finish the fight until an entire game later when Halo 2's cliffhanger ending was finally resolved.

My point is, Halo 2 perhaps stands to benefit more than its older sibling should it get another, more comprehensive remake. It's also worth nothing that Halo 2 Anniversary was beholden to the source material's exact level layout since you could switch between both graphical options on the fly – a Campaign Evolved-style remake would presumably allow for more dramatic changes.

Our Halo: Campaign Evolved review calls it a "faithful remake of the 2001 classic that highlights exactly why the original Halo holds up so well 25 years later," even though Halo Studios could've done more to put its own spin on the classic game.

Halo 3's final mission could have been a flying banshee scene inspired by Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

A former Bethesda employee has revealed that the publisher was working on an unannounced PVP shooter which was eventually canceled.

The employee, who was included in Xbox's latest wave of layoffs that hit the publisher, included details about his 12-year tenure at Bethesda on his LinkedIn profile (via Twitter user Timur222), which included a detail from his role as an associate producer that reads: "Supported production on an unannounced PvP FPS title (subsequently canceled), contributing to scheduling and cross-team coordination."

However, that's pretty much all there is in terms of info for this title. Keep in mind the dev worked at Bethesda Softworks, not Bethesda Game Studios – the studio developing Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles – so there's a ton of possibilities.

One throughline in the resume is working with Machine Games on Wolfenstein games, and while the studio most recently released Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, there was a rumored FPS title in the works. In a Bethesda roadmap leaked in 2023, there was a title called "Project Platinum," which Giant Bomb founder Jeff Gerstmann identified as a Machine Games title in the vein of Rainbow Six Siege or Counter-Strike.

Over a year ago, Timur222 also spotted a "Canceled unannounced project" on the LinkedIn page of another MachineGames employee, giving the idea that this was Project Platinum a little more evidence, given it fits within the 2021 - 2025 timeframe.

Earlier this year, rumors emerged that MachineGames had begun work on Wolfenstein 3, after eight years and two spinoffs since Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus' ending, which felt like it was the beginning of something big (I mean, you gotta kill Mecha Hitler, right?).

Since the layoffs, word has emerged that Bethesda is set to focus on its "strongest franchises," which includes Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein. And while wanting to focus on Doom and Quake while destroying the studio behind them is certainly a move, the news does suggest that Wolfenstein 3 is safe from cancellation for now.

Doom developer id Software "is essentially dead," Duke Nukem 3D co-creator says after layoffs

Xbox has announced Xbox backward compatibility for PC, with four original Xbox games released today on the Xbox app.

In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft says, "Today, we’re introducing Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC, making it easier to play classic Xbox games from the past across PC and handhelds, including the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X."

The post adds, "As players, we don’t want to leave our gaming legacy behind even as technology continues to evolve and advance. We expect our library of games to move forward with us and to be able to play them in entirely new ways." If that isn't a soft confirmation of Project Helix having backwards compatibility, I don't know what is.

Included in this list is Rare remake Conker: Live and Reloaded, flight combat title Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, failed mascot Blinx: The Time Sweeper, and Bill Gates' favorite game Fuzion Frenzy.

The post continues, "This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve Xbox games from the past and bring them to PC over time." Oh, and all four are included with all Xbox Game Pass plans.

Microsoft also says these editions will have enhancements, explaining, "We are also adding new features to make your gaming experience better than ever."

These include "4x resolution upscaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed display modes, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and more. These games also include customizable language and audio settings."

Xbox confirms that Achievements will be coming to these original Xbox games, with the four games released today set to be updated to include them "in the coming months."

Arkane founder asks Xbox CEO "how much" Microsoft wants for the studio: "I'm asking for a friend"

Fallout 3 designer Bruce Nesmith previously shared his hopes that a remaster of the game would make the combat better than it was in 2008.

Last week, Bethesda dropped a load of info about its post-apocalyptic RPG series: Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," New Vegas developer Obsidian is returning to the series for a new entry, and Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters.

Granted, this felt a bit like jingling keys to distract from Microsoft's massive wave of layoffs – something one workers' union has already called out – but it's naturally a very exciting prospect to fans.

Speaking to FRVR around the time The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered released in 2025, Nesmith shared his thoughts about a potential remaster of Fallout 3, admitting that the gunplay in the 2008 RPG is "not good."

"It didn’t hold up to shooters at the time," he explained, "a lot of work was done on that for Fallout 4."

And it's true, Fallout 4 did feel more akin to what would be a traditional first-person shooter of that era, making it so players didn't have to rely on the V.A.T.S. quite as much.

"I anticipate seeing a lot of that work [we did with Fallout 4] go into it [Fallout 3 Remastered]," Nesmith explained. And granted, Oblivion Remastered did make some changes to the combat compared to the 2006 original, namely giving new movesets to the melee weapons. So perhaps Bethesda will end up making the shooting in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) feel more like Fallout 4.

Modders remastering Fallout 3 in Fallout 4 are not bothered by Bethesda's official version: "Our project has been a community-driven passion project for almost a full decade"

Forza Horizon 5 director Mike Brown says Xbox Game Pass simply hasn't taken off enough to be viable.

Speaking to MinnMax (via Eurogamer), Brown – who departed Playground Games in 2023 and is now directing open-world racer Clutch at Maverick Games – was asked about the current wave of layoffs facing Xbox studios. Brown singles out Xbox Game Pass and says Microsoft "invested a fortune in the concept," which led to teams being acquired, games being funded, and jobs being created. However, he adds, "The reality is not enough people have subscribed to it at the prices that they needed to pay in order to make that business viable."

Brown explains, "We’re now going to see studios getting shut down or spun off. Loads of people are going to lose their jobs. And that is honestly just a result of a well-meaning player-focused concept of Xbox Game Pass not quite landing."

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier talked about Xbox Game Pass on the Triple Click podcast, where he claims, "there are a lot of people out there in studio leadership within Xbox who absolutely detest Game Pass and think it has destroyed the value of their games, think it has taken away from the value of all games in general just as a service" He adds, that some of those people believe "It's been a detriment to the games industry."

Brown has a bit more of a favorable view of the service, however, saying, "It's a good idea. Let's have a subscription, make it affordable, try and get games to more people. We'll have a really diverse selection of games on there. We'll get a load of studios involved. We'll make some games that probably couldn't exist otherwise."

Last year, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate reached $30 per month, which led to subscriber loss according to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who promptly took the price down to $23 per month.

Arkane founder asks Xbox CEO "how much" Microsoft wants for the studio: "I'm asking for a friend"

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.

Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek hears you crying about PlayStation's decision to end physical game discs in 2028, and he's shoving your own fist in your mouth to make you stop. You caused your own suffering, he wants players to know.

"You, the consumer, have made a choice, and your choice is for digital," Faliszek says plainly in a new YouTube video on the subject. "I keep seeing this, like, 'Oh, they should do memory cards. They should do…' Right now, today – the games we are talking about are available at retail today. The used games are available at retail today, and you aren't going into retail and buying them."

Unfortunately for the thousands of commenters spamming Sony's last trailer for Marvel's Wolverine with emoji pitchfork and torches, he's right. Circana industry analyst Mat Piscatella just revealed only seven PlayStation games managed to crack 100,000 physical sales in the US this year.

Even worse, "Anybody who's reporting software sales right now, and they're doing digital and retail, they're all under reporting," Faliszek says, "because they're not reporting Steam. Let's not even get into mobile. And what was Game Pass? Game Pass was digital only. You as the consumer have forced the large corporations hand, and you've told them 'Stop with retail.'"

Once you, apparently, regretted your decision to invest almost entirely in digital, you didn't start buying Crimson Desert discs while you could, nor did you abstain from making digital purchases altogether. Now it's too late, says Faliszek.

"You should have started protesting Game Pass, and stop buying Xbox games, and stop buying digital," says the frustrated writer. "But you didn't, because it's easier."

The Steam Machine isn't doing exclusives because Valve thinks "restricting where people can play" doesn't work.

Todd Howard warns he is no longer thinking of retiring, he will persist until the end of days, asking you to buy Skyrim - and to release a few more games, we imagine.

Todd Howard has been at Bethesda Game Studios since 1994, when it was creating Terminator games, making a massive splash on the studio's popularity after taking on the director's role for The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, the game that established the Bethesda RPG for years to come.

Since then, he's directed Fallout 3, 4, Skyrim, and Starfield. And while he's only in his mid-50's now, by the time his Game Director roles on The Elder Scrolls 6 and presumably Fallout 5 come to an end, he'll likely be nearing retirement age.

Speaking to Jason Schreier, Howard is asked about his eventual retirement and says, "The truth is there was a period of time a while back where I pondered what does it look like? Not is it imminent, but what does it look like? And I no longer do."

He explains, "I see the work we're doing. I just love it. I love working with these people. It's really not something I think about."

Howard adds, "Some folks in our industry that are a little older than me, they're just making great stuff, too. So, it's not something I've been thinking about."

One such name who is a "little older" is Hideo Kojima, who on his 60th birthday just under three years ago said he has no plans to retire, and wishes to create things for the rest of his life. But worry not for now, Todd Howard will be around to sell you copies of Skyrim on PS6 and Xbox Project Helix.

Elder Scrolls and Fallout boss Todd Howard says "you'd be surprised how many great ideas I get" from Reddit.

Bethesda Game Studios boss Todd Howard has revealed he's constantly lurking on Reddit and claims the team is consistently taking that feedback on board.

In a thread on r/Games, Howard chimed in with his first Reddit post since the launch of Starfield – well aside from reacting to one post six months ago that modded a cardboard cutout of him into Fallout 4 as the immortal snail – saying "Hey Reddit. I’m a professional lurker and read your comments all the time."

And given Reddit's reactions to Bethesda games at times – just look at any New Vegas thread – this may have sounded vaguely threatening, but Howard adds, "Many here do and we deeply appreciate all the passion for our work."

The thread in question was the post from Bethesda outlining the future of the studio. This post included news about how Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters, Obsidian is making a new Fallout game, and an update on the production of The Elder Scrolls 6. Howard explains, "Today’s info was an attempt at changing that and letting everyone know what we’ve been working on the past several years, and a look at what’s coming. So know we’re constantly listening and keep telling us how to be even better."

Howard also added, "You’d be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote your favorite and we’ll do it. Maybe."

Unsurprisingly, fans really want Oblivion Remastered to be fixed after a year. One user says, "Please get Virtuous to keep patching Oblivion and give it as much love as you guys gave Skyrim, because it feels abandoned right now, which is a shame."

Meanwhile, another has fears that the upcoming Fallout remasters will share a similar fate, saying, "Pay Virtuous whatever amount needed for the remasters to function well."

Only 16 Fallout: New Vegas developers still work at Obsidian, says RPG's original writer.

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."

As Bethesda announces what's going on with the future of the studio, director and producer Todd Howard has acknowledged the layoffs that have hit the studio as part of Microsoft's latest batch of staff cuts.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Howard calls the cuts at Bethesda Game Studios "really tough" for him and his colleagues. This latest round of cuts saw staff at the studio laid off as part of Xbox's seemingly now-yearly mass layoffs – including 18-year veterans of the company like Ray Lederer. Bethesda as a whole also got hit hard as we also saw fellow ZeniMax Studios id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios face heavy cuts.

Howard adds, "This is Bethesda's 40th anniversary, and there have been periods where we've gone through changes," referring to a portion of the 1990s where the studio was on the brink. But now, he says, "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises and what we need to do to deliver for everybody."

Word over the last week is that Xbox has been pushing Bethesda to focus on marquee titles with Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, while the wider ZeniMax studios work on Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein.

Howard also spoke about his personal feelings on the layoffs with Windows Central, saying "I've been doing this a long time, whenever you've worked with people for, in some cases, many decades, and they're no longer here, that's really personally very difficult, and difficult for our teams."

These interviews have come alongside word that Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," that Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters, and that Obsidian is returning to the post-apocalyptic RPG series for a new entry. But with layoffs across Bethesda and Obsidian, as one workers union has already suggested, it's hard not to see this as Microsoft trying to change the subject.

Video game fans are currently quite unhappy with everything going on at Xbox, with thousands of developers losing their jobs, and calling into question how these diminished numbers will affect development going forward. So a big blowout of every Fallout project everyone wants to know about – with nothing to actually show from them – arguably feels more like an attempt at a distraction or reassurance, rather than it being the right time to drop this news.

After seemingly endless amounts of speculation and rumours, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters have been officially announced by Bethesda.

This happened in a Twitter post where Bethesda Game Studios acknowledged the future of the studio following Microsoft's latest massive wave of layoffs – including the future of its big three: Starfield, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. While Starfield got some more proof of life and Elder Scrolls got a pretty simple "we're working on it," Fallout fans are eating right now.

Not only has Bethesda outlined the future of Fallout by confirming that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, and that the rumours are true and it will be working with Obsidian Entertainment on a new Fallout game, but the past of the series is also getting some love as Bethesda finally confirms those remasters are happening.

"We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences." Bethesda says, adding: "While we're not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas."

This duo of remasters has been heavily requested and heavily rumored since the release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered in 2025, and while it's not exactly been a massive secret, this is the first time Bethesda has outright mentioned it's happening. Fallout 3 was first released back in 2008 and marked Bethesda's first outing with the franchise, while New Vegas was helmed by Obsidian Entertainment – a studio at the time filled with ex-Fallout 1 and 2 staffers – and is widely considered the greatest game in the franchise.

Only 16 Fallout: New Vegas developers still work at Obsidian, says RPG's original writer.

Doom: The Dark Ages director and id Software co-studio director Hugo Martin has acknowledged the layoffs the studio is facing, and says things aren't as dire as they sound.

As part of a Slayers Club Live stream on the Bethesda YouTube channel (spotted by Kotaku), Martin says: "There's been reports that we've been 'nerfed into the ground' and 'gutted' and we have 50 people and that’s not true."

These reports came from a mixture of places. Derek Best, a principal VFX artist at the studio, talked of Xbox "nuking a team into the dirt," while a WARN notice filed in Texas suggested that 136 of the 185 developers at the studio were let go.

Martin continues, "We're the size we were when we made Doom 2016 and id Tech is very much alive and well." Reports also claimed that the id Tech team was decimated at the Texas studio, but Martin says: "You have to understand we have id Tech engineers both in Frankfurt and at MachineGames. We collaborate quite a bit."

Furthermore, he adds: "The id Tech is there, the Doom team is here, and we're excited to share with you guys more of what we're working on in the future when it is appropriate and approved."

After the layoffs occurred, former employees claimed Martin had proposed a "Gun Fu" action game inspired by the likes of John Wick, while Perfect Dark, a western robot survival game, and multiple Doom projects were also rumoured to have been pitched.

Martin says "the fact that we made a game that people like and is critical and commercially successful – like I said, it's doing very well related to the forecast and stuff – that's good for everyone, for the people at the studio, for the people who, unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to." He adds: "But what matters the most is that the games are good and I'm so happy that people, I don't know… It's just a good thing for everybody, it's going to help. So we are really here to just play the game now and celebrate the work."

If anything, Martin's note that Doom was critically and commercially successful just makes Microsoft's layoffs more mind boggling. A legendary studio which created some of the most iconic shooter franchises in history – ones Xbox is reportedly pushing Bethesda to make more of – facing layoffs at this scale while also being successful and owned by one of the most affluent companies in history is difficult to explain, to put it lightly.

Laid-off id Software devs "cannot imagine a path forward where they make another game in id Tech," despite the Doom studio's claims.

Clockwork Revolution isn't going to feature an overly annoying companion, thankfully, with inXile Entertainment founder and Fallout veteran Brian Fargo confirming as much.

We've all played games with less-than-ideal companions. From too much hand-holding to generally pesky personalities, there's no shortage of qualities that can make gameplay a bit of a slog to get through. The Legend of Zelda immediately springs to mind for me, with the ever-loathed (and beloved) Navi, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond's Myles Mackenzie, the notoriously annoying sidekick of protagonist Samus.

Much to the gaming community's delight, however, Clockwork Revolution won't feature a companion that makes you want to connect your head with the desk – Fargo, studio head and game producer, reassures us of this in a new online post.
"Been getting questions about the companion in Clockwork Revolution. Rest assured: I LOATHE companions that point out the obvious because they think players are dumb," he writes.

"Ours only speaks when it knows something you couldn't or has something genuinely funny to say. Kept rare on purpose. Hoping by the end you say, 'I wish she talked more, not less.'" That'd certainly be the day, eh?

As for why Fargo and fellow developers at inXile chose to make their companion (presumably Prentice, the flying, foul-mouthed automaton described by publisher Xbox Game Studios last month) that way, basically, it has to do with retro games and how Fargo feels they treated their players.

"My philosophy goes all the way back to the '80s," as he explains in response to a fan agreeing that they're "so tired" of spoiler-laden companions.

"Even when the audience was truly younger than today, we always treated them with intelligence, and we never regretted doing so." That makes a lot of sense – and explains why older games feel more "difficult" in contrast.

I'm personally thrilled to learn Prentice won't be as hand-holdy, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see just how far that goes when Clockwork Revolution releases in 2027.

Time-bending RPG from Fallout veteran has choices that "take a long time to catch up with you."

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"

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"

Xbox subsidiary Obsidian got butchered along with most of the parent company's children during mass layoffs earlier this month, making the original Fallout: New Vegas team even more scarce. New Vegas writer Chris Avellone did the math, and it looks like only 16 of Fallout: New Vegas' total 73 developers still work at Obsidian.

"Some of the ex-NV developers were among those laid off last week, unfortunately," Avellone explains in a July 14 Twitter post on the topic. 21-year veteran art director Dan Alpert was impacted, as was animator Shon Stewart, and assistant art director Paul Fish. "Shon in particular was a big surprise when I heard about it," says Avellone, "he's a great animator."

But many New Vegas developers had already been long gone from Obsidian. Character artist Kevin Manning has spent the last seven years at Riot Games, for example, junior artist Megan Morse hasn't worked at Obsidian since 2012 and is currently an artist at Exodus studio Archetype, and Avellone himself left Obsidian – which he co-founded – in 2015. He's currently fiddling with secret "other projects, including RPGs," he says on Twitter.

Obsidian is now toiling over a new Fallout game – which may or may not be the new Fallout game we already knew about, Fallout 5 – after Xbox canceled its planned sequel to 2025 action-RPG Avowed. So while it isn't exactly thrilling news that only 20% of Fallout: New Vegas developers have jobs at Obsidian after 16 years of layoffs, game cancellations, new opportunities, and plain, old life, it's not a big surprise to me, either.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain returned to Obsidian in 2025 for an unrevealed project, and co-creator Leonard Boyarsky has spent the last decade at Obsidian. This doesn't satisfy the people on Twitter who begged Avellone for his Obsidian stats to begin with, but so little does.

"I wasn't sure about a few people on the list, so this may get revised," Avellone adds on Twitter. "Still, better than nothing and a lot better than yelling back and forth."

Fallout: New Vegas writer says he feels "embarrassed" by some of the Fallout TV show dialogue, but has no notes for "really cool" Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Despite a statement from the studio, former id Software staff don't see how the studio can possibly make another game in its id Tech engine after a majority of the devs at the Texas-based studio were laid off.

Last week, after much conversation about what state the legendary studio is left in after 136 of its 185 developers were laid off by Microsoft, id Software released a statement on Twitter. "While our studio was impacted, those changes were spread across teams. We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for," the post reads, saying "The team today is about the same size we were when making Doom 2016."

While the Doom 2016 line may be true, the cost of game development is rapidly increasing compared to even ten years ago. And given the comments from developers affected by these layoffs, like Derek Best, former principal VFX artist, who said, "Nothing says business success like nuking a team into the dirt and relegating them to support studio size," many saw this as potential damage control from higher-ups at the studio.

Speaking to Game Developer, a source impacted by the cuts at id Software says, "Does Microsoft care? Absolutely not. And they seem to actually put some level of effort and care into making it as painful as possible."

Another dev let go last week told the outlet "They've just gotten rid of all the people who could ever fix, maintain, or change [id Tech], so it's most likely going to end up in the in the trash can," and while Microsoft commented on word that only one staff member remained at the Texas studio working on id Tech, they did not specify how many were working on the engine, which is also used by Wolfenstein developer Machine Games.

The developer continues, "The institutional knowledge [that has been lost] on the id Tech side is immense... I cannot imagine a path forward where they make another game in id Tech."

And yet, word is Bethesda is planning to focus on its biggest franchises going forward, and while The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are likely the priority for Bethesda Game Studios, Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein – three series made in id Tech – are apparently included in that focus. I'm not sure I see the thought process behind Xbox's decision with that one.

"There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," says Doom dev: "They have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of"

An id Software developer says there is no benefit to being owned by Microsoft after the Xbox-owned developer faced mass layoffs one day before the launch of a new Doom DLC expansion.

Speaking to Gamedeveloper, the unnamed source at the Doom developer explained, "They [Microsoft] didn't even wait to see if the product is successful before they got rid of the team."

And had Microsoft waited, it would've seen that Doom: The Dark Ages' Revelation DLC has netted rave reviews on Steam and is one of the top-rated games of 2026 on Opencritic.

Reports say the studio has seen 136 of its 185 developers laid off by Microsoft, in its fifth round of mass layoffs since spending 75 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard. Despite the publisher apparently pushing Bethesda to make more Doom games, Xbox saw fit to seemingly gut the team behind the iconic franchise.

"There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," the developer continues. "In fact, they have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of."

Unfortunately, even if you release a good and successful game now, you're still not safe. Doom: The Dark Ages was the "biggest launch in id's history" when it launched in 2025, and just over a year later, id has reportedly been made a shell of its former self.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft is in the process of letting go of 51 developers at Ubisoft Barcelona, right as Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced was is released. One Gamedeveloper source echoed this, saying, "It feels like we put a good product out and it just has zero effect on your longevity in the industry."

There really aren't many studios left with the legacy of id Software – the studio that revolutionized the FPS, which would then go on to become the biggest genre in the world for a time – and it's a studio that has never really had any major missteps either. It's a shame to think that years of knowledge might be lost as 136 developers seek out new employment in an industry with fewer jobs to go around.

"Great job Microsoft": Former id Software artist says the legendary dev has been "relegated to support studio size" after Xbox's strategy of "nuking a team into the dirt"

There's too much carnage to keep up with – Xbox is in the middle of chopping up 3,200 jobs, Ubisoft's on track to have made a total of 4,000 layoffs since 2022, and Embracer is now indistinguishable from a natural disaster, having laid waste to $2 billion-worth of acquisitions by closing, canceling, and setting fire to everything unlucky enough to be in its path. Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead QA manager Dave Gallacher has seen it all, and he despises it.

"Each structural point of our industry is controlled by money and those with it have been greedy morons for the past 10+ years," Gallacher, who spent 10 years at DICE before joining Arrowhead this summer, says in a LinkedIn thread discussing worker-owned studios as the possible answer to mass layoffs. "How Ubisoft and Embracer leadership aren't in prison absolutely eludes me for their shady tactics, and the victims are very much these thousands of talented developers we're hoping can summon money out of the ether to start studios."

That's a painful analysis, but Gallacher has clearly been working with it for a while. Last week, as Xbox began culling thousands of positions and leaving studios bleeding out the neck, Gallacher said in another LinkedIn post, "For the past 3 years, I've used the phrase 'this year is going to be a bloodbath,' relating to the games industry. And somehow it gets worse each year."

"Where is that money going?" he continues. "A deluded CEO speaking of reaching 'billions of players' whilst pouring the newly pilfered wages of talented Devs into the plagiarism machine (AI). Absolute darkest timeline shit."

Microsoft. Ubisoft. Embracer. EA, Gallacher's former employer, which reportedly laid off Battlefield 6 devs after they helped make a game that sold 20 million copies. Epic Games, which exterminated more than 1,000 jobs in March after being disappointed its $26 billion game Fortnite is waning in popularity. There's not a single angel among these video game industry behemoths, only vultures.

Since I read and write about layoffs and game cancellations nearly every day, recently, I find it difficult to feel anything toward it that resembles optimism. I also play video games for fun every day, and my own headlines about money and lost jobs knock around the back of my head while I grapple with the fact that, despite everything, I still love playing video games.

"Some parts continue to drive obsessive behaviour, some parts make you want to go play in traffic," Gallacher said earlier this week in another post about the video game industry. "It's complicated." There's not much else to say – just, if Ubisoft and Embracer leadership ever do go to prison like Gallacher fantasizes, I think it should be the one from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Sony's attack on physical goods spreads to Crunchyroll as it adds a $14 subscription requirement just to access its store.

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

Former PlayStation head Shawn Layden has urged Asha Sharma at Xbox to decide whether it wants to be a publisher or a platform holder.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Layden says, "There's two roads," when it comes to what Microsoft can do, that is "be a competitive platform rival in the marketplace with PlayStation, or the biggest game publisher in the world, which based on all their acquisitions, they're either there or they're very close to it."

However, Microsoft's inconsistent decision making has seen the Xbox brand try to be both, as it went all-in on releasing its games on PS5, before running it back with the likes of Gears of War E-Day,

"Those two roads do not converge," Layden says, adding, "to be a platform and to be a very well-supported, well-accepted, well-selling platform, you need exclusive content." He explains, "Nintendo needs its Mario and its Zelda, and PlayStation needs Crash Bandicoot and Astro Bot and Kratos and Horizon, all of that." Granted, Crash Bandicoot is now owned by Xbox, but he was the de facto PlayStation mascot for its early years.

He adds, "If you're going to be the biggest publisher in the world, which is not a bad ambition - I'm sure there's gold on them there hills - you have to bring your stuff on every platform. Multi-platform is almost a prerequisite."

Layden explains, "When I was running PlayStation Studios, even in our biggest year, we never got over maybe 22 percent market share," and that the remainder was made up primarily by the biggest third-party publishers.

"As a first-party platform, our job was almost not to be the biggest game publisher in the world." Layden adds, "I wasn't making games so I could steal market share from EA or steal market share from Activision. My job was to make games that made the pie bigger, and my opportunity was in growing it out."

Unfortunately, right now the only consistent thing from Xbox is that people will be laid off in droves on a pretty much yearly basis, if the five rounds of layoffs since the Activision Blizzard purchase are anything to go by. And while Microsoft is bound to release Call of Duty on other platforms for a while yet, the idea of spending disgusting amounts of money to own the biggest franchises in the world and then still releasing them for your rivals is somewhat confusing.

id Software co-founder says "my 'Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand' statement isn't aging well" after the Doom maker lost 136 of its 185 staff to layoffs

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.

Xbox claims that reports of there being only one person in Texas left working on id Software's id Tech engine are inaccurate.

Reports emerged that as part of the devastating layoffs at id Software – which saw 136 of the studio's 185 staff members laid off – the team working on the id Tech engine was affected massively. Yesterday, it was claimed that this was so widespread that only one person was left working on the engine at id Software's main Richardson, Texas studio. However, in a statement given to Kotaku, an Xbox spokesperson says this is inaccurate

"There are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations," the spokesperson says , adding: "Reports that there's only one person left in Texas are inaccurate." That being said, it is unconfirmed just how many people are left working on the tech.

Kotaku's source said they weren't sure how the engine could be patched due to the breadth of the layoffs, saying: "The institutional knowledge is just not there." The same source said: "id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever."

Derek Best, former principal VFX artist at id Software who worked on the latest Doom trilogy as part of his 12 year tenure at the studio, claimed the studio has been relegated "to support studio size," while saying Microsoft was responsible for "nuking a team into the dirt" and "throwing out massive technological achievements."

Alongside these comments, Best noted that "the VFX team was eliminated down to one single artist with no lead or producer." As for the engine, he also mentioned that "the engine programmer responsible for the massive gains in VFX pipeline improvements (like all the particle editor work) was let go as well," adding that "all devs that had Houdini knowledge for procedural modeling or cached animations were wiped out." Best said: "All the work for Doom: The Dark Ages in that program has gone to waste with no one to carry it on."

Pitches for a co-op Doom, a new Perfect Dark, and a John Wick-inspired cyberpunk game were cooking at id Software before Microsoft layoffs reportedly led to 136 job cuts.

id Software co-founder John Carmack has reacted to the massive layoffs under Microsoft, which have reportedly led to the majority of the studio losing their jobs.

"I have been trying to find something meaningful to say about the Id Software layoffs." Carmack says in a thread on Twitter. "My 'Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand' statement isn't aging well," he says, adding "this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month."

Carmack explains: "I'm saddened, but I can't muster anger or outrage over it. I don't have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft's perspective." He says, "I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios," in reference to a Bloomberg report (via PC Gamer) that claims that profits from Minecraft had been used to prop up less successful studios under the Xbox banner.

However, Carmack is taking a bit more pragmatic approach when it comes to the layoffs, even if they are coming from a company that made $281.7 billion in 2025. "To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved," Carmack adds, saying, "You can't rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn't be your default belief. I don't think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from id games."

Carmack then speculates on different approaches that could've been taken like different pricing or marketing – and one could argue giving away Doom: The Dark Ages, a $70 game, for the price of a subscription fee probably didn't help it sell.

Former principal VFX artist at id Software, Derek Best said earlier this week that Microsoft has nuked "a team into the dirt" and relegated them "to support studio size." But despite this, Carmack believes, "The game isn't over yet, and I hope the studio rallies through." Fellow id co-founder John Romero also commented on the layoffs, calling them "devastating" while praising the developers who carried on id's legacy after the founders left, saying: "The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people."

Pitches for a co-op Doom, a new Perfect Dark, and a John Wick-inspired cyberpunk game were cooking at id Software before Microsoft layoffs reportedly led to 136 job cuts.

id Software's massive layoffs have turned the iconic FPS developers into effectively a support studio, according to a developer affected by the job cuts.

Despite the word that Xbox is apparently pushing Bethesda to work on tentpole franchises like Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein – as well as to get the likes of The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 out sooner, which has apparently resulted in Obsidian canceling an Avowed sequel to work on a Fallout game – Microsoft has decided to absolutely decimate Doom and Quake developer id Software. Word is that the studio has seen 136 of its 185 developers laid off by Microsoft, with word that the id Tech engine team is now a single employee.

Derek Best, former principal VFX artist at id Software – who worked at the company from 2014 until he was laid off this week – posted on LinkedIn (via VGC) about the layoffs.

"A little over 12 years ended unceremoniously the day before the DLC launch we all crunched to get out the door." He continues, "I'm still in shock at how brutal the layoff cuts were," saying that "Collectively decades of knowledge was wiped out of the studio."

Best notes that among the 136 employees affected. "The VFX team was eliminated down to one single artist with no lead or producer."

Best adds, "Great job Microsoft. Nothing says business success like nuking a team into the dirt and relegating them to support studio size while also throwing out massive technological achievements."

It's hard to stress how much the id Tech engine was integral to almost every Quake game as well as the modern Doom games.

Not to mention the IW Engine and Treyarch NGL engines used for Call of Duty titles are based on idTech 3 after it was used for the first Call of Duty game. And most recently, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle proved how good it is for other genres, with the adventure game looking gorgeous and running smoothly. And I can't expect whatever Xbox has planned for Doom or Quake in Unreal Engine to feel quite as right.

Still, it's not about Doom or Quake feeling right at the end of the day. It's about 136 jobs being lost and one of the most important studios in the history of gaming being hollowed out by its owner, and the decades of technical knowledge leaving the studio with those employees.

Pitches for a co-op Doom, a new Perfect Dark, and a John Wick-inspired cyberpunk game were cooking at id Software before Microsoft layoffs reportedly led to 136 job cuts

Doom developer id Software was reportedly pitching various projects before a majority of the studio was laid off, including a new Perfect Dark, a John Wick-inspired game, and a multiplayer Doom game.

As reported by GamesBeat – which has interviewed now-former employees about the massive layoffs at id Software that have reportedly seen 136 of its 185 developers laid off by Xbox – after finishing Doom: The Dark Ages' Revelations DLC, the studio wasn't working on a major project, and was in the midst of pitching various ideas, which unfortunately left it in a vulnerable position. These projects apparently included an original game called Fury, a new Perfect Dark, and a multiplayer-focused Doom title.

Fury is reportedly a project that studio co-director Hugo Martin proposed, and blended sci-fi, noir and cyberpunk elements with Gun Fu combat in the vein of the John Wick film series. Another apparent candidate was a western robot survival game with the codename Ironwood. Meanwhile, Doom reportedly had pitches for multiplayer, co-op, and DLC projects for the series that never materialized.

There was also a Perfect Dark pitch reportedly being worked on with a presentation given and concept art in the works. The series hasn't had a release since the Xbox 360 launch title, with the rebooted project from The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics canceled last year as part of what seems like now-yearly mass layoffs at Xbox.

However, none of these projects are likely to ever come to light. Reports out of Bethesda claim that Xbox is apparently pushing the company to get the likes of The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 out sooner, and that alongside those two, the company is to focus on tentpole franchises like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

Of course, I don't really understand why you would absolutely gut the company responsible for Doom and Quake (as well as the studio that made Wolfenstein's most influential title: Wolfenstein 3D) if you wanted to focus on those series, but Xbox and Microsoft decisions don't always make the most sense. Previously, Matt Booty (then head of Xbox Game Studios, now executive vice president and chief content officer of Xbox) said "we need smaller games that give us prestige and awards," a day after closing Tango Gameworks, which had released Hi-Fi Rush – a smaller game that gave Xbox prestige and awards.

John Romero praises the devs who carried on id Software's legacy as Microsoft reportedly lays off half of the studio.

The fallout from the bloodbath that is this week's unprecedented cuts to Microsoft's gaming division, which saw 1,600 Xbox employees lose their jobs immediately and will ultimately result in 3,200 cut jobs before the end of fiscal year 2027, continues with another high-profile departure. We're now learning that 27-year Bethesda veteran and lead character artist Christiane Meister, who worked on the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, has been let go.

The news was spotted by Elder Scrolls scholar Lady Nerevar (via PC Gamer), and confirmed via Meister's LinkedIn, which now reflects that the developer is a "former" Bethesda character artist and now open to work. "I was in charge of design, creation, and management of character art assets throughout all of the Elder Scrolls projects, starting with Morrowind to our latest title, Skyrim," reads her bio.

Of course, there's an unfathomable human toll to any mass layoff, but the loss of such an enduring talent – Meister wrote in a 2022 blog post about redesigning Skyrim's Khajiit and Argonians, as well as the game's horses – really underscores the fundamental level at which Xbox is willing to cut core talent behind its most beloved IP, despite the company's renewed focus on those tentpole franchises.

Meister isn't the only veteran losing her job, as Xbox's latest layoff blitz has impacted a 37-year Microsoft veteran who served as lead of the Xbox Backward Compatibility program for Xbox 360 games on Xbox One, Kevin LaChappelle.

It makes sense then that groups like the Bethesda Game Studios Union are sounding the alarm on what it calls a "cycle of cuts in pursuit of ever-greater profits," and one which I'll note isn't exclusive to Microsoft or Xbox. The games industry has been in a years-long downsizing crisis for years now with little sign of slowing down. Firings like Meister's not only come across particularly callous but also chip away at the visual identity of franchises gamers have depended on for invaluable escapism for decades.

Fallout and Elder Scrolls union says Bethesda layoffs didn't hurt Microsoft's "14 layers of management" – "We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers"

Xbox is in the midst of an aggressive recalibration. CEO Asha Sharma is pursuing a "reset" of the content portfolio. Compulsion Games and Double Fine have regained their independence, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have been sold; thousands of jobs have been cut across Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, and Xbox Game Studios. We're still getting a grasp on how severely individual studios are impacted, although some appear significant.

Reportedly, id Software has lost 50% of its staff. It's a shocking development, leaving a pioneering developer – the stewards of the id Tech engine, and creators of Doom and Quake – with drastically lowered capacity. Bethesda Game Studios, id, MachineGames, and ZeniMax Online have apparently been given a mandate to refocus on Bethesda's "strongest franchises", but it's difficult to know where id goes from here.

Doom, Eternal, and The Dark Ages performed admirably, but didn't necessarily rip and tear the market to shreds. Quake Champions launched out of early access in 2022 but failed to gain momentum – arena shooters remain a challenge in an environment dominated by battle royale, extraction, and hero shooters. It's been over seven years since Rage 2.

Common sense would dictate that id shifts to support MachineGames – long rumored to be developing a sequel to 2017's Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. This would make sense: MachineGames has collaborated with other Bethesda studios around Wolfenstein in the past, having launched Cyberpilot and Youngblood with Arkane Lyon in 2019.

There's also external pressure to consider. A live action Wolfenstein television series is in development at Amazon MGM Studios, and given that Asha Sharma recently outlined a trans-media vision for the future of Xbox, it's unlikely that she will want to repeat the mistake made with Fallout: two hugely successful seasons of the show landing without a new Fallout game to meet raised interest.

Speaking of Fallout, id Software could help Xbox pursue its ambition of getting players back into the wasteland a little faster. Given the palpable appetite within the Xbox community for Obsidian to deliver New Vegas 2, I'd rather see id's expertise placed elsewhere. The studio is world renown for making the best feeling shotguns in video games – that would be wasted on V.A.T.S.

Xbox owns arguably the greatest catalogue of shooter franchises in the video game industry. Brink, Call of Duty, Doom, Gears of War, Halo, Overwatch, Perfect Dark, Prey, Quake, Rage, Singularity, Soldier of Fortune, StarCraft, and Wolfenstein to name but a few. If Xbox is serious about wanting to deliver more of its biggest franchises faster, it could do far worse than transition id to Gears or Halo.

Halo 3: ODST proved that Halo can thrive under tonal shifts; perhaps a faster, more furious id instalment would work wonders as Halo Studios gets its arms around the future of the mainline series. But really, id and Gears are a match made in heaven. The series could do far worse than an FPS experiment.

The gritty setting is perfect territory for a grounded, viscerally violent FPS. Don't just take my word for it, Cliff Bleszinski (designer of the original trilogy) toyed with taking Gears in this direction before Epic sold the IP to Microsoft. "I can tell you I wanted to actually consider going first-person with it," he told XboxEra. "I mean, can you imagine chainsawing a Locust in first person?"

I can imagine it, Cliff, and I want to play it. And there's no studio more equipped to make it a reality than id Software. Whether it will be given the opportunity under this new era of Xbox remains to be seen.

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Xbox's latest wave of mass layoffs has been far-reaching across the company and has even impacted one 37-year Microsoft veteran who served as lead of the Xbox Backward Compatibility program for Xbox 360 games on Xbox One.

Kevin LaChappelle, who joined Microsoft in August 1989 and most recently (in 2023) became vice president of Xbox platform, has taken to LinkedIn to confirm that he was part of the 1,600 roles eliminated this week (itself only half of the planned total of 3,200 layoffs that'll be rolling out across the 2027 fiscal year).

"I will add my name to the list of people who were laid off today at Xbox," LaChappelle's post reads. "This ends my 37 years at Microsoft."

Although LaChappelle, by his own description, has "worked in many different parts of the company," he says his "fondest memories are of leading the team of very talented engineers who built the Xbox Backward Compatibility program. Sitting in the auditorium when Phil [Spencer, former Xbox boss] announced the program at E3 2015 was incredible. The audience's reaction was unbelievable."

He's not exaggerating – you can watch the moment that the crowd erupted with excitement in the video below. As Spencer said at the time, the feature had "been consistently at the top" of fans' "request list," but Xbox hadn't even been sure "it was possible." Lo and behold, though, the team led by LaChappelle pulled it off.

This wasn't LaChappelle's only contribution to Xbox, as he also went on to lead "the team who created our Cloud Gaming product."

Going forward, LaChappelle says, "I am a firm believer that all entertainment will eventually become streamed to you wherever you are. I look forward to watching how Xbox evolves going forward and I wish the team nothing but success."

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says "a healthy Xbox could weather" the current storm, but Microsoft's gaming brand is anything but: "Our core has to be healthy."

From the outside looking in, it would appear that Undead Labs is a victim of mismanagement. The team was acquired by Xbox Game Studios in 2018, just weeks after the release of State of Decay 2. A sequel is set to land in 2027 after navigating a turbulent trajectory – revealed before it was ready for public consumption, development stalling during pre-production, challenges in shifting to Unreal Engine 5. The survival shooter finally opened its doors to public alpha testing earlier this spring.

Undead Labs didn't contribute any new games to the ecosystem in eight years. That's an irrefutable fact, which may speak to why Xbox just sold the studio as part of an internal reset. Although that doesn't mean the team hasn't been busy.

State of Decay 2 was a quiet success – amassing 10+ million lifetime players by its fourth anniversary. Undead supported this community with an expansion, multiple updates, new features, and years of refinements. Given how starved PS5 is for new co-op titles, it's shocking SoD2 wasn't part of the first wave of Xbox games to abandon platform-exclusivity. Another error from the prior Xbox administration.

Xbox has historically done a poor job of drawing attention to collaborations across XGS. The Coalition is an Unreal Engine 5 center of excellence. Other teams have made use of Ninja Theory's high-end motion capture studio. Rare provided the networking know-how for Double Fine's Kiln. Blizzard lent its cinematics expertise to Playground for Fable. Obsidian's proprietary dialogue editor is used by various in-development RPGs at Xbox. There's countless other examples.

Just like State of Decay helping bring Grounded to life. Operating with a small budget, Obsidian sought a novel way to achieve its co-op ambitions. And so it turned to Undead Labs, who had developed a system to store world-data as a shareable save file in the cloud. It's what allows multiple players to independently drop into the same persistent world without requiring a community's host to be online.

"It's almost like a pseudo-dedicated server space," Marcus Morgan, Obsidian's VP of operations, told me last year. "It's effectively just a shared cloud save, but you don't need any of the dedicated server infrastructure – or the cost that goes with it."

"The intention behind that was, because we were a small team (there were only like 20 people working on it, and the cost of making it was relatively small) this was a good way to satisfy player's needs," he says, adding: "That stemmed from a collaboration between us and Undead Labs. I have to give a big shout out to that team. They built this tech initially, and then we built upon it."

This 'Shared Save' technology helped Obsidian scale quickly to build more vibrant and collaborative backyards. Eventually, Undead received an expanded 'Shared World' system in return – allowing State of Decay 3 to support far larger communities, no longer constrained by the co-op tethers that plagued its predecessor. It'll be interesting to see whether the tech evolves again in the future.

Still, it's an interesting example of the sort of value that Undead Labs brought to Xbox, and the way the XGS group has been able to leverage wider expertise to bring concepts to life. Eight years without releasing a new game clearly isn't enough for this next era of Xbox, but the legacy of Undead Labs and State of Decay will live on through Grounded 2's ever-expanding Brookhollow Park forever.

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Along with the announced cut of 3,200 employees at Xbox, a number of studios like State of Decay 3 creator Undead Labs have either split from the company or gone independent – which also means, in the case of the zombie survival threequel at least, Game Pass might be off the table.

Just yesterday, Asha Sharma revealed the Microsoft layoffs, noting that Xbox sees three to 10 times lower margins than "comparable platform and publishing businesses." This "significant restructure" of the company also means that several studios – one of which is Undead Labs – are officially moving under other brands or going indie, splitting from Xbox. The State of Decay 3 developer itself will see new management, although it's unclear who just yet.

Although we don't yet know who Undead Labs' new owner will be, part of the exit deal between the team and Xbox may mean State of Decay 3 won't have to launch on Game Pass.

As per a recent report from Game File, while the deal does call for the release of the game, as well as the continued funding required up to that point, it doesn't leave State of Decay 3 obligated to Xbox-controlling terms, like being available on Xbox Game Pass. That's certainly interesting.

It's especially eye-catching as State of Decay 3 was just showcased during June's Xbox Games Showcase 2026, where it finally got a 2027 release date – a date fans had waited six long years to hear about.

The supposed continued funding is always nice to read, but I'm admittedly left wondering what other implications this entire situation might have for the third State of Decay entry. It's difficult to tell.

As for the other companies that will no longer be operating under Xbox, there's Psychonauts dev Double Fine, South of Midnight creator Compulsion Games, Senua studio Ninja Theory, and Arkane – a team that is notably currently working on Marvel's Blade. Management at the latter is "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options," so it's not yet clear exactly what's happening there.

Some of these, like the first two, are independent now. Meanwhile, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are finding new homes to work within.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says "a healthy Xbox could weather" the current storm, but Microsoft's gaming brand is anything but: "Our core has to be healthy."

Apogee co-founder George Broussard has commented on the latest wave of Xbox layoffs, saying Microsoft not shutting the studios is simply "decent PR" for them while the studios now face new struggles.

As part of what it calls "the most significant restructure in Xbox history," Microsoft, is laying off 3,200 staff from Xbox over the next year, with five studios being sold or spun off as independent developers – including Bethesda studio Arkane, which is still in consultation over its future. Significantly hit from this round of layoffs is reportedly Doom and Quake developer id Software, which is with former Bethesda lead Jeff Gardiner reporting that 95 developers are being let go from the studio – which is reported to have around 200 employees per its LinkedIn.

Developer of one-time Doom rival Duke Nukem 3D Broussard also commented on the id layoffs on Twitter, reporting on what he's heard from the studio about the magnitude of these layoffs. "Tools, programming (except a couple), Quake Champions team, testing team. All gone." Broussard reports, while another quote says "seems like all they left was leadership and art/design. I think Xbox forgot Quakecon is next month."

Broussard adds, "It really does sound as if id is now a support team for Bethesda/others. Rip idTech, which was amazing. Maybe Machine Games will carry it on or maybe it will be dropped for future games? But the read is that id is essentially dead. At least for the time being. Yes, the studio wasn't closed and half still have their jobs. That's great."

As for the four studios Microsoft let go, Broussard says, "One view is this is great. For MS they get decent PR for being 'good guys'. But the truth is that in at least one case (and maybe others), retaining the IP in such a case was written into the original contract when MS purchased them."

So far, it has been confirmed that Double Fine and Compulsion are retaining their IP as part of their independence, with Undead Labs and Ninja Theory still confirmed to be working on State of Decay 3 and Senua, respectively; however, it's not clear if the studio's new owners will also own their franchises.

Broussard adds, "Second, these studios now are out of the MS lifeboat, on their own, and will have [a] short time to find new deals or funding and they will make it or not. Never mind they sold to MS originally to avoid this grind and be 'safe'."

He adds, "Yes, they have a second chance, but more layoffs may simply be deferred and outside the current umbrella of today's layoff round, so MS doesn't really get the bad PR of simply shutting studios down. This means continual worry by the employees and stress for mgmt."

id Software co-founder John Romero has commented on the layoffs, which have reportedly cut the Doom and Quake developer in half.

Xbox is laying off 3,200 staff over the next year as part of what it calls "the most significant restructure in Xbox history," with this marking the fifth wave of layoffs since acquiring Activision Blizzard for $75.4 billion. Hit especially hard from this is ZeniMax Studios – which Microsoft acquired in 2021 – with Arkane set to be spun off or sold (alongside Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Double Fine, and Compulsion Games), while Fallout developer Bethesda Game Studios is reportedly losing 35 staff members.

Bethesda is reportedly pivoting to focus on its "strongest franchises," with reports claiming this is set to include Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein alongside the obvious push for The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. However, shockingly, id Software – one-time Wolfenstein developer and current Doom and Quake shepherds – have reportedly been gutted with layoffs, with former Bethesda project lead Jeff Gardiner reporting that 95 of the around 200 staff members are being let go from the studio.

Romero – whose FPS title was canceled, reportedly by Microsoft last year, which had Romero Games potentially facing closure – reacted to the news on BlueSky, saying, "I’m thinking of everyone at id today, and everyone else affected by yesterday’s layoffs. Romero Games was there a year ago. I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you."

Romero continues, "I know what it feels like to leave id while id goes on. It’s a strange and painful thing to step away from a place that holds so much of your work, friendships and history." He adds, "The people at id have done a great job moving that legacy forward. DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today’s industry. The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people."

The gutting of id Software is especially confusing in the wake of the news that Bethesda wants to focus on two of its games, but on top of that, the amount of knowledge just lost from the studio with the layoffs reportedly focused on the coders working on the id Tech engine – who are regarded as some of the best in the industry – likely leaves the upcoming Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein games in a worse place than they would have been.

As Bethesda is reportedly hit hard with layoffs from Microsoft, president Jill Braff has apparently told staff of the plan to focus on the company's strongest franchises going forward.

This week, Xbox announced its fifth wave of layoffs since purchasing Activision Blizzard, with this ongoing wave set to see 3,200 staff laid off over the next year. From the sounds of things, Bethesda is going to be one of the most affected targets of these layoffs, with former Bethesda project lead Jeff Gardiner reporting that 35 staff at Bethesda Game Studios are losing their jobs, while id Software is being gutted, reportedly losing 95 staff members.

On top of that, ZeniMax-owned studio Arkane is in the process of "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options," while Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Double Fine, and Compulsion Games have broken off from Xbox during this latest restructuring, with the latter two going independent.

The layoffs at id Software are a major surprise, as they come alongside reports that Bethesda is set to change focus to its biggest franchises, which reportedly features Doom and Quake – two franchises primarily developed by id Software – alongside the expected push for The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. While these were first reported by Bloomberg, an internal email from Braff acquired by IGN seems to back this up.

"These shifts also reflect the realities of our industry and business – and our responsibility to ensure Bethesda is operating from a more stable foundation." Braff says, adding: "To be successful in the future, we need to change course. We must strengthen our business, return to sustainable growth, and ensure we can continue investing in our franchises and our players."

She continues, "To best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what's next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises." Braff adds, "By working more closely across the organization, sharing expertise and capabilities, and focusing our investments on the opportunities with the greatest potential, we believe we can better support our franchises and IP with meaningful long-term potential."

Of course, one wonders why Microsoft took this long to shift Bethesda's focus and work on getting the next Fallout and Elder Scrolls games out as soon as possible. However, with a significant portion of the talent at id Software affected – which reportedly is focused on the coders working on the id Tech engine – it feels almost antithetical to the studio's plan to focus on its first-person shooter franchises, and evidence of the poor planning from Xbox management that has led us to this point.

As news of Microsoft cutting 3,200 employees at Xbox continues to make headlines, CEO Asha Sharma explains that it's been a long time coming, as the company couldn't weather its growing storm.

In a new statement to Fortune following news of the Xbox layoffs, Sharma provides a bit of insight into what she dubbed "the most significant restructure in Xbox history."

She explains, "In order to grow, we made a bunch of bets… and as we did that, we inherently didn't focus on the core business. The number one measure of your strategy is what you put your resources behind, and we simply spread ourselves too thin."

Part of this new restructuring plan includes Xbox reeling itself back into focusing on its own flagship console – one the company has arguably placed on the sidelines in lieu of Game Pass and other hopeful undertakings – and removing various management layers for more centralized teams.

Overshadowing all this is also the surging cost of hardware – the company announced yet another price hike for its consoles late last month, noting that "console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027." Interestingly, though, Sharma notes that Xbox potentially could've gotten through this rough patch… had it been "healthy" beforehand.

"A healthy Xbox could weather the shock of the hardware crisis," she admits. "With an unhealthy Xbox, it becomes really challenging, and it accelerates a lot of the changes we need to make."

That's understandable – as per her own words, Xbox sees three to 10 times lower margins than "comparable platform and publishing businesses," after all. Those aren't great numbers for what was once a leading name in hardware, to say the least.

Sharma says that turning Xbox back to its former glory will take time, however. According to her, executives are toying with new business models for the company's hardware, too, like expansions to consumer programs that lower financial barriers (think "buy now, pay later") and making Xbox more available on mobile and PC to reach a wider breadth of players.

She concludes, "Our core has to be healthy, and that will be necessary but not sufficient."

Here's hoping Microsoft and Xbox in particular manage to turn things around. Plenty of folks – and studios – depend on it, and it's not difficult to see that Sharma's right about the health of the company.

Xbox parts ways with 4 studios, with South of Midnight and Psychonauts devs going independent as Arkane begins "required consultation" to "review potential strategic options."

As Microsoft officially drops layoffs on Xbox in its biggest restructuring ever, developers from beloved studios are reacting with shock, frustration, and in the case of the Bethesda Game Studios Union, solidarity with employees being made redundant.

The BGS Union says it's tired of workers on the ground paying for the mistakes of the top-level executive suite, time and time again.

"In what is becoming a stressful annual routine, Microsoft has decided to lay off thousands, including MANY of us at Bethesda Games Studios. With over 10k developers already cut from previous rounds, those at the top have deemed that insufficient in fixing their mistakes," reads a Bluesky post from the workers union.

"Today we say goodbye to many of our friends and colleagues and to hundreds more across Xbox, including folks that have worked at Bethesda Games Studios for decades. When will this cycle of cuts in pursuit of ever-greater profits end?"

In an anticipated but nonetheless upsetting announcement, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma today revealed her big "reset" plan for Microsoft's long fledgling gaming branch: all in all, 3,200 jobs are being cut over the course of fiscal year 2027, 1,600 of which have been made immediately redundant.

Meanwhile, at least four studios are splitting off, with Compulsion Games and Double Fine going independent and Ninja Theory and Undead Labs entering "terms to join new ownership." Finally, the broadest overview of Xbox's big downsizing involves "potential strategic options" for Dishonored and Deathloop studio Arkane, words I'm sure are providing utmost comfort to the developers working there.

In her reasoning for Xbox's latest layoff blitz, Sharma points to weak operating margins, an overstuffed portfolio of AAA and indie studios and acquisitions that didn't pay off, and lower than expected returns on Game Pass and multiplatform investments.

Because of our One BGS union, we have the right to negotiate over the impacts of these layoffs, helping secure stronger severance packages and better support for those leaving the company.We will do everything we can to make sure our friends are properly taken care of.

— @bethesdaunion.bsky.social (@bethesdaunion.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T20:13:11.556Z

The question of when will enough truly be enough is on the minds of millions of game developers, journalists, and fans growing increasingly weary of studio closures, layoffs, and game cancelations in one of the most turbulent periods the games industry has ever faced. Although it can be hard to think of a major video game developer, publisher, or hardware manufacturer that hasn't seen cuts in the last few years, the latest 20% reduction in Xbox's overall workforce stands out as one of the most egregious in recent memory.

The workers being forced to leave Bethesda Game Studios are in the comparatively advantageous position of being protected by a union contract, which can often stipulate more favorable severance terms relative to a non-union job being made redundant – yet another argument for organized labor in the industry.

"Because of our One BGS union, we have the right to negotiate over the impacts of these layoffs, helping secure stronger severance packages and better support for those leaving the company," the union adds. "We will do everything we can to make sure our friends are properly taken care of."

Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake will reportedly join Fallout and Elder Scrolls as Bethesda owner ZeniMax switches focus to its largest franchises amid Xbox restructure

Despite rumors that Xbox was looking to have Bethesda owner ZeniMax focus on Fallout and Elder Scrolls, the company will reportedly also be working on other franchises as part of an overhaul amid Xbox's major restructuring.

While Xbox is considering "potential strategic options" for Arkane, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have been purchased by currently unknown buyers, while Double Fine and Compulsion Games are going independent. As part of its ongoing wave of layoffs which will see 3,200 staff laid off over the next year (the company's fifth wave of layoffs since the purchase of Activision Blizzard) – Bethesda owner ZeniMax is reportedly also going through an overhaul to see it focus on the biggest franchises under its banner.

Last month, rumors emerged that Xbox is reportedly pushing the company to get the likes of The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 out sooner, but other franchises are reportedly set to be worked on alongside them. As reported by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, ZeniMax will apparently pivot to focus on its biggest franchises, including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, alongside its iconic FPS trio Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake, amid a significant overhaul.

Notably, Quake and Wolfenstein haven't had new entries in around a decade, since Quake Champions and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus released in 2017 (although two Wolfenstein spinoffs did release in 2019 to a negative-to-mixed reception).

However, despite the news that these franchises will be developed, Schreier reports that Quake and Doom developer (as well as one-time Wolfenstein developer) id Software will be cutting "a significant number of staff" today alongside ZeniMax Online Studios – which faced a game cancellation alongside layoffs almost exactly a year ago.

It's unclear whether the franchises will be worked on by other studios under the ZeniMax banner, however Wolfenstein developer Machine Games is seemingly unaffected by today's wave of layoffs.

It's been confirmed that four Xbox-owned studios are breaking free from Microsoft ownership amid the "most significant restructure in XBOX history," while "required consultation" begins with management of Arkane.

In a memo sent to Xbox staff today, CEO Asha Sharma reveals that South of Midnight studio Compulsion Games and Psychonauts developer Double Fine are both going independent. Meanwhile, Senua studio Ninja Theory and State of Decay dev Undead Labs will be getting new owners, while management of Marvel's Blade studio Arkane is "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options."

Sharma writes: "Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to management and transition to independent studios with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have entered terms to join new ownership with funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3."

In the memo, Sharma admits that from 2018, "we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined." Acknowledging that the company is competing "not only with the largest publishers, but also with smaller independent studios," Sharma says "it is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio."

All this comes as Sharma outlines plans to "reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27," with around 1,600 members of staff being laid off today. "We are also making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects," she continues. "These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios. None of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions."

Responding publicly to the news, Compulsion Games has issued a statement clarifying that it will "retain the rights to Contrast, We Happy Few, and our award-winning South of Midnight," and adding that it's "grateful for the years we spent with Xbox." It says: "As an independent studio, we're excited to continue building the distinctive games that define Compulsion while taking the next steps in our journey."

Furthermore, Compulsion is "confident in the future" of the studio "and look forward to this next chapter where one thing will remain constant: we will create unique games that tell important stories, all with the goal of touching the hearts and minds of our players."

Double Fine similarly shares its thanks to Xbox in a statement, both for its support over the years and "for working with us to reach an outcome which preserves our history and culture, and returns ownership of our games to us."

An important update from Compulsion Games.

— @compulsiongames.bsky.social (@compulsiongames.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T14:29:37.785Z

All this comes following weeks of whispers that studios including Double Fine and Compulsion were under threat of closure. It was reported that Microsoft was already planning its split from Ninja Theory when its next game, Senua, was revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase only weeks earlier. For those three studios – as well as Undead Labs, which is set to release State of Decay 3 at some point next year – this outcome is quite a relief. Though undoubtedly still unsettling for staff – a number of Compulsion Games employees announced that they were looking for work only a couple of weeks ago – at least the studios aren't closing their doors.

Things are less reassuring when it comes to Dishonored and Deathloop studio Arkane. Clearly, there'll be more news on its fate to follow, but "potential strategic options" doesn't immediately inspire confidence that the devs will be able to continue as normal. It was only a few weeks ago that lead concept artist at the studio, Jean-Luc Monnet, reassured fans that Marvel's Blade is still in development, but a report from The Verge last week which claimed that Microsoft was considering cancelling the game or selling the studio obviously wasn't so comforting.

As reported last week, Obsidian Entertainment appears to be safe from closure amid the Xbox restructuring.

I hope that Clockwork Revolution doesn't mark the end of an era for Xbox. Every time I see it in action, I feel like I'm getting a glimpse into the future of role-playing games.

inXile Entertainment is showcasing an experience built on a foundation of depth and flexibility; an RPG where you're charged with changing the past to take control of your future. Expressive combat and detailed customization combining with a spiraling approach to choice and consequence. If Clockwork Revolution delivers on its potential, it'll show what can be achieved when a talented team is afforded six years to raise its creative ambitions.

Following the Xbox Games Showcase, CEO Asha Sharma announced an internal reset. While she stated that "a reliable pipeline of first- and third-party exclusives and new IP are critical to our success", it was also acknowledged that Xbox has "over extended" itself after expanding too rapidly under old leadership. Rumors of widespread layoffs and studio closures have followed.

I suspect the version of Xbox that exists by 2027 will be one that prioritizes shorter development cycles, less creative risktaking, and a pivoting of resources to support faster deployment of "industry-defining franchises" like Fallout, Forza, Gears, and Halo. Which is to say, it won't necessarily be an environment where something like a Clockwork Revolution is possible.

Clockwork has this neat system built around the lives of companions. As you reach into the past, pulling at threads to reshape the steampunk city of Avalon, the worlds of your favorite characters can change in unexpected ways. "The crew you come back to might not be the same one you left," teases game director Chad Moore. It's a big creative concept layered atop wild time manipulation / displacement powers, and storytelling split across different timelines.

There's a reason Clockwork has been selected as the first Xbox console-exclusive of 2027. It could be a genuine system-seller, the sort the Series X desperately needs. There's also a chance it'll be the last of its kind. Clockwork Revolution will technically mark the first inXile release for Xbox. The team was acquired in 2018, and spent its first two years in the XGS ecosystem shipping Wasteland 3. Six years later, the most ambitious RPG in inXile's history is almost here.

In an era where development is more complicated, expensive, and time intensive than ever, it's going to take that sort of timeframe to create something capable of pushing genre boundaries. My fear is that a changing Xbox, one more brutally responsive to industry pressures, may no longer burden the risk of producing new IP in this way. Clockwork Revolution is among my most anticipated games, I just fear it'll mark the end of Xbox's acquisition misadventure.

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PATCH NOTES: v02.09.2026 – Project Fantasy is in turmoil after a publishing partner, which sources corroborate to be Xbox Game Studios Publishing, pulled funding of the online fantasy RPG from developer IO Interactive.

What's going on with IOI's Project Fantasy?

• IOI announced that its relationship with an "external partner" had ended.
• Losing the backing of this partner has forced IOI to restructure
• Development of Project Fantasy continues as IOI remains "100% committed" to the project

Why is this happening now?

• Xbox is recalibrating its entire business model
• New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is assessing how and where it invests
• Xbox changes are impacting the industry beyond its first-party studios

Developer Comment

Meta Shift:

• IOI has been on a victory lap since the release of 007: First Light.

The studio has had a lot to celebrate right now. First Light is the best Bond game since Goldeneye, Hitman: World of Assassination continues to grow, and there's a remaster of the original Hitman trilogy moves into production with Saber Interactive. The news highlights just how quickly things can change in this industry.

This is another example of Xbox's changing priorities as CEO Asha Sharma attempts to recalibrate the business. Microsoft says that it's "taking a fresh look" at where it invests to ensure it is "focusing on our highest priorities."

For independent studios like IOI, this means the funding thought to be once secure can slip away in an instant – impacting game development timelines and prompting studio layoffs.

Known Issue:

• Very little is known about Project Fantasy, which was first announced in 2023, and that is now unlikely to change any time soon.

When I spoke with IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak in June 2026, he told me that development of this new adventure – an online fantasy RPG, one that draws creative inspiration from the 'Fighting Fantasy' books – was progressing well. "Hopefully the world will see the original IP that we're working on, we're going to reveal that soon."

"It might be revealed sooner than you think," Abrak told me a few weeks ago, adding that the prospect was "pretty damn exciting" with IOI finally establishing itself as a studio capable of maintaining multiple projects at once. "I acknowledge that IO Interactive has always been known as the Hitman studio, but I think that's about to change… Who knows what the future of Hitman, Bond, Project Fantasy, and the other exciting things we're working on is going to bring, but our confidence is pretty high right now."

When reached for clarification on whether the studio's plans to reveal Project Fantasy "soon" have changed following recent developments, IOI has no comment beyond the statement it made to the public.

Patch Notes Summary:

• Project Fantasy hasn't been canceled, but it has lost its publisher.

While sources tell GamesRadar+ that the game was due to be revealed soon after years of development and investment, it's likely that the next update we receive on the project will surround who is funding it rather than gameplay details.

IOI could (in theory) support Project Fantasy as an independent studio, or it could seek outside investment in an effort to bring its ambitious multiplayer game to life. For now, it seems like IO's fantasy of becoming a developer who can support multiple IPs at once has become more of a nightmare.

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Xbox is reportedly testing a feature that would let users turn their physical game collections into digital game libraries amid a wider industry shift away from video games on disc.

Today, PlayStation became the first of the big three console makers to unveil a plan to completely stop producing disc-based games in 2028, but the writing's been on the wall for many years now as publishers increasingly choose digital-only releases over the hybrid digital/physical launches that have been the norm for several console generations. Meanwhile, Nintendo's shift toward digital releases and embrace of game-key cards, as well as PlayStation's plan to kill discs entirely and Take-Two's decision to make GTA 6 a digital-only release foretell a bleak future for physical game collectors, but Xbox reportedly has a plan which, in theory, could be a genuine boon for players choosing to embrace all-digital consoles in the future.

The Verge reports that an Xbox disc-to-digital feature is in the testing phase weeks after it found references to "enable Disc2Digital" buried in the Xbox PC app's code. The way it works seems pretty simple. If the version in testing is implemented, owners of a compatible physical game will obtain a digital entitlement by inserting the disc into an Xbox console and installing it.

Digital ownership of the game will be tied to the physical disc and will be transferable from one account to another, meaning you'd be able to trade games with friends and switch profiles just like you would with an actual disc. Naturally, you'll need a Microsoft account to register your disc-to-digital games, but there seem to be relatively few caveats to Xbox's disc-to-digital plan from this limited reporting. The Verge reports that Game Pass subscribers will be able to stream their physical-to-digital games as long as those games are available on Xbox Cloud Gaming, and likewise, if a game is supported by Xbox's Play Anywhere deal, physical Xbox games will be playable on PC via this new system.

As manufacturers seemingly move toward discless consoles – although it's currently unconfirmed whether Xbox's next-gen Project Helix will be digital only – and with older generations of hardware succumbing to inevitable decay, there's a real threat that physical games will become harder and harder to actually play on first-party systems. Microsoft's apparent solution, however, is reportedly in the works for Xbox Series X and Xbox One consoles and won't be available for Xbox 360 and original Xbox games, many of which are compatible with current-gen Xbox hardware.

There's a good chance we'll get the full details from Microsoft itself on Xbox's reported disc-to-digital feature shortly, but in the meantime, I'm more curious to hear if PlayStation has a plan in place for physical collectors considering Sony's the only manufacturer to actually confirm it's ditching discs for the next generation.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not