Imagine, if you will, that you’ve been working on a new sci-fi MMORPG with Titanfall-like movement. Things are starting to come together after a long pre-production period, but it’s okay because Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming’s CEO, loves your game. He loves it so much that he reportedly couldn’t stop playing it and needed Xbox’s Matt Booty to tear the controller away. Microsoft executives didn’t just like the game – they were, as sources told Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, “blown away by it.” Not in development hell either. Going places, good times.
Now imagine that those leadership figures approach you and your team to tell you that your project, which you’ve poured years of your life into, has been cancelled. Actually, don’t, because what happened (allegedly, of course) is that studio leaders locked your team out of their Slack accounts while telling them that the same project has been cancelled. Oh, and hours later, you don’t even know if you’re still employed.
You could also try imagining a similarly aggravating situation at Halo Studios, formerly 343 Industries. After working for years to help turn around what one developer called a “dumpster fire of a live service,” you’re fired for the sake of “agility and effectiveness,” that too as a memo from Spencer touts that the company’s “platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger.” At the same time, Microsoft continues to invest more into AI, to the extent that one anonymous developer told Engadget, “They’re trying their damnedest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents.”
Perhaps it’s better to imagine life at Turn 10 Studios. Truth be told, you’ve had a rough year and a half. Forza Motorsport, your long-awaited reboot, is finally available…and fans hate it. Thus begins the slow process of fixing everything – the progression, the online play, the Car-PG mechanics your team so proudly displayed, and, of course, the numerous bugs. Months of new cars, tracks, events, and features later, it’s incomparable to past titles. But things are steadily improving.
Then you’re told that 50 percent of your studio is gone and that the Forza Motorsport franchise is essentially dead. That last point is still somewhat contentious, as it comes from a former Turn 10 Studios employee who left in 2016 (and may or may not still have connections). Regardless, based on the number of departures, it seems that those lucky enough to keep their jobs are relegated to mere support. For now, of course.
Following Microsoft’s mass layoffs, many more stories have begun to emerge about the studios affected. Romero Games, established by John and Brenda Romero, has shut down. Xbox didn’t acquire it but rather provided funding for the studio to develop a new triple-A sci-fi first-person shooter. That’s since disappeared, according to an employee on LinkedIn, resulting in the game’s cancellation. And this isn’t a small operation – over 100 employees are affected.
Then there’s the story about last year’s demo for Perfect Dark reportedly being fake. It led to a bit of back and forth before former senior level designer Adam McDonald weighed in to reveal that the demo was in-engine and that, “It worked best if you played it the way the person playing in the video plays it, but it still worked even if you didn’t hit the marks perfectly.”
While acknowledging the existence of “some fake stuff,” McDonald said that the “real gameplay systems shown off worked juuust enough to look good in the video.” The parkour and hacking/deception systems were real – even the combat was quote-unquote real if played in that exact same way. What could have truly been with the final product? We’ll never know for sure, even as Alix Wilton Regan, Joanna Dark’s voice actor, asked fans to “speak up if you wanna see Perfect Dark survive.” Quite frankly, I approve of more people shouting at Microsoft for its incompetence or just in general.
As overwhelming as the number of stories has been, there also haven’t been enough. What’s going on with Compulsion Games? We know there were layoffs at Undead Labs, but to what extent is a mystery (and considering State of Decay 3 had its share of development troubles over the years, there’s reasonable concern over what happens next). Where is Contraband, the co-op title that Xbox Game Studios teamed up with Avalanche Studios to work on? How will the cancellation of Perfect Dark affect Crystal Dynamics, which was working on it alongside The Initiative?
Amid all this, one thing is for sure – Phil Spencer isn’t retiring anytime soon. Yes, there was actually a rumor that he would be retiring as Microsoft Gaming CEO, but almost as swiftly as it gained traction, the company was quick to clarify to The Verge that he is, in fact, staying. A salary cut, maybe? No? Alright.
To me, it feels like Xbox is a creature perpetually dreaming. Dreaming of the Xbox One as an all-in-one living room console centered on Kinect to reach a wider audience – the true endgame of the Xbox 360’s Kinect success. Dreaming of owning all these studios and just leaving them to their devices to make great games without any oversight. Dreaming of every platform being an Xbox and telling as many people as possible, as much as possible, in the hopes that they eventually believe it.
Yet, try as it might, it can’t control the contradictions that keep popping up and interrupting its obliviously peaceful slumber. Of players vehemently rejecting a Kinect-centric console and the executives who drone on about crossover media and TV shows. Of studios failing to meet deadlines, lacking the resources to address issues, or even just hoping that their projects are cancelled before launch because their leaders lack the first clue on what to do. And, my favorite – telling everyone that, “This is an Xbox,” while not even mentioning the PS5, where their titles are actually performing well sales-wise.
My second favorite is probably laying off all these employees and shuttering projects, then reportedly accepting ideas for the future. It happened with Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, who allegedly pitched Hi-Fi Rush 2 and a new Dishonored, and Microsoft decided it made more sense to shut them down. Then-Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty turned around shortly after and allegedly told remaining employees that the company needed “smaller games that give us prestige and awards.”
More recently, VGC’s Andy Robinson heard about reported pitches for a new Banjo-Kazooie with names like Toys for Bob and Moon Studios popping up. Time is a flat circle, wearing one of Spencer’s leather jackets and hyping up how the next year – the next year, for sure, guys – will be great for Xbox.
The bloom isn’t so much off the rose for Microsoft’s Gaming Division so much as the rose is now mulch. If there was hope about Xbox turning its fortunes around amid declining hardware revenue and gaming revenue only propped up by Activision, or at the very least, cautious optimism in its transition to a multi-platform publisher, maybe even the faintest glimmer that the next generation of Xbox could possibly reignite the brand, it’s dead.
Then again, Microsoft as a whole doesn’t seem to think in those terms. It seemingly functions to follow the money, no matter what trends it must plunge into or how much must be butchered, burned or buried in the process. The only constant in the company is change – changing what it will chase next, inevitably sacrificing the people who carried it so far, all in the name of revenue. Unfortunately, if there’s any other constant, it’s that no matter how much one dreams, eventually, you need to wake up.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
