Earlier this week, Microsoft announced a number of their studios were being shuttered, including Arkane Austin (Prey, Redfall), Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within, Hi-Fi Rush), and Alpha Dog Games, while Roundhouse Studios will be absorbed into ZeniMax Online Studios to work on The Elder Scrolls Online. This follows nearly 1,900 layoffs earlier in the year, largely from Microsoft’s newly-acquired Activision Blizzard teams. Unfortunately, it seems this isn’t the end of the pain.
According to Bloomberg’s reliable Jason Schreier, folks across the Xbox organization have been told more cuts are on the way. It’s unclear at the moment which divisions will be affected, or if any more studio closures could be in the cards.
While it was already fairly clear, according to Schreier’s reporting the closing of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks came as a shock to employees, as both studios were actually in the process of pitching new games and staffing up for future development. Tango was said to be pitching a sequel to Hi-Fi Rush, while Arkane was pitching a new single-player immersive sim in the vein of the Dishonored games.
Per Schreier, at an internal town hall ZeniMax Media head Jill Braff (ZeniMax is the umbrella company for Bethesda) said the goal is to focus Bethesda on fewer bigger projects, as it’s “hard to support nine studios all across the world with a lean central team with an ever-growing plate of things to do.” Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as they had just shipped games and hadn’t started on the next thing as Microsoft looked to consolidate.
Interestingly, Schreier also brings up Xbox Game Pass, which has stagnated in recent years, with gaming subscription service spending only growing 1 percent over the past year. Schreier hints this may be the reason for the Xbox layoffs – when Game Pass was the focus, Microsoft needed a steady stream of exclusives to feed it. If Game Pass is no longer the focus, it perhaps makes more sense to focus on bigger AAA titles so they can go head-to-head with competitors like Sony. Needless to say, this potentially doesn’t bode well for developers like Double Fine, Compulsion Games, and Ninja Theory that were largely purchased to provide those smaller Game-Pass-friendly titles.
The times are a-changing for Xbox, let’s just hope not too many people lose their jobs as they reinvent themselves.
