Xbox Officially Confirms Layoffs, Is Selling And Letting Studios Go Independent

It's been a pretty hectic week on the video game front, and this week was promising to be no different. It had been rumored for a while that some brutal cuts were about to be made by Xbox, with rumors that several studios like Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and even Arkane could be on the chopping block.

An official announcement was tipped for this week, and sure enough, Xbox has officially confirmed its cuts via a new Twitter post from CEO Asha Sharma.

Xbox Confirms Layoffs And Studios Being Sold

To start with, the real pain point of this announcement is that Microsoft will be laying off approximately 4,800 employees, 3,200 of which are part of Xbox. A total of 1,600 of these are "role eliminations" that will take place today, while a total of four studios currently under Xbox's watch will move to new management.

These studios are Double Fine, Compulsion, Ninja Theory, and Undead Labs, though thankfully, none of them have been completely shut down by Xbox. Instead, Double Fine and Compulsion have both been returned to their own management and will become independent studios, similar to how Toys For Bob split from Xbox a while back.

Ninja Theory’s Closure Was Planned Before Senua Was Even Announced

It seems like the Senua announcement was nothing more than a plan to get investors interested.

Ninja Theory and Undead Labs appear to have already been sold by Xbox and now have new owners, though what companies now own these studios hasn't been mentioned. It's also been explained that both studios have received funding to complete their current games, those being the third Hellblade game and State of Decay 3 respectively.

As for Arkane, another studio that was rumored to be in trouble, that situation is stickier. Due to the developer being based in France, Xbox can't simply move employees around and do what it likes with the studio with the same impunity due to the country having better labor laws. Its fate is currently still up in the air, though Sharma claims that the studio is "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options."

Finally, as for the studios that are still with Xbox, none of their current announced projects have been canceled, but cuts have been made and investment is shifting to more "higher priority projects." In addition to that, Mojang and King will now report directly to Sharma herself, as she argues both are responsible for games that have "increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players."That's pretty much everything in terms of layoffs, and while the entire situation is disgusting and horrible, it's possibly the best case scenario that no studios are being shut down right now. That layoff total could have been far worse had Xbox decided to just close everyone, and more people keep their jobs this way. It's a brutal set of layoffs regardless though, and hopefully, people impacted can get back on their feet relatively quickly.

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