Amid wide-ranging layoffs at Microsoft, Xbox's Perfect Dark reboot has reportedly been canceled and its studio, The Initiative, shuttered. It's also being reported that Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 is losing roughly half its staff as a result of the downsizing.
Via Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, "Xbox is canceling the long-troubled project Perfect Dark and closing The Initiative." This comes from an email sent by Microsoft's president of game content and studios, Matt Booty, obtained by Bloomberg and other outlets.
Schreier also reports that "many of Xbox's subsidiaries," including Call of Duty maker Raven Software, have been hit with layoffs. In particular, Forza studio Turn 10 has reportedly lost roughly 50% of its staff.
Meanwhile, Rare's elusive action-adventure game Everwild, first announced in 2019, has also been canceled amid the mass layoffs, per reports from numerous publications. Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online has also been impacted, and its new MMO codenamed Blackbird canceled.
The exact scope of Microsoft's latest round of layoffs is as yet unknown, but Microsoft itself has indicated that just under 4% of its total workforce has been let go. Microsoft employed about 228,000 people as of last year, which would put the number of impacted workers at around 9,000.
According to Variety, which has corroborated much of the above through its sources, everything that was announced at last month's Xbox Games Showcase is still moving forward despite the mass layoffs.
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