Microsoft had quite the messy day. Yesterday, after rumors and speculation led us to believe this news was coming, there was finally confirmation of layoffs. We’ve seen quite a mass exodus of employees across the entire company, including the gaming division. While we don’t have specifics yet on every studio that was affected, it’s understood that there are still over 40 projects in development at Xbox.
It wasn’t a fun day at all for Microsoft with the number of employees being let go. We received a statement from Microsoft, which noted that this was a move to further secure a necessary position for the company in terms of success in a dynamic marketplace. That said, we did see several studios reportedly undergo layoffs.
That said, a Variety source familiar with the internal situation reassured that there were over 40 projects in active development. Likewise, all the games we’ve seen during the Xbox Summer Game Fest event are safe. Of course, a memo that Variety received from Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty noted that there were a few unannounced projects that were ultimately scrapped.
The two projects that were announced and subsequently canceled as part of this latest restructuring of Microsoft include The Initiative’s Perfect Dark reboot, along with Rare’s new IP, Everwild. While Rare is still a studio, it was revealed that The Initiative was shut down. That appears to be the only studio that was closed entirely, but again, we’re left waiting to see which studios were affected and how many layoffs they had to endure. Furthermore, we wonder just what this means for some of the planned launch windows of these projects now that they may have far fewer developers actively working on the games.
Regardless, rumors continue to circulate online about the state of Xbox, with Microsoft issuing statements on the matter. For instance, it was recently rumored that Phil Spencer, the CEO of the gaming division at Microsoft, was planning his exit from the company, but we’ve seen statements suggesting otherwise.