Xbox cuts 268 more jobs and hands the next Halo game over to Activision as its year long restructuring nears the finish line

[Depot]

Microsoft's Xbox division has confirmed a further 268 job cuts as part of the ongoing reset announced back over the summer, bringing the company to roughly three quarters of the way through a previously announced restructuring plan that ultimately targets around 3,200 total job losses across a full year. Halo Studios has borne the brunt of this particular round of cuts, with only a small remaining team staying on purely to support existing Halo games going forward rather than developing new mainline titles.

In a significant shift for the franchise, a new team operating under Activision's leadership will now develop the next mainline Halo game, with Activision also taking on oversight of Rare and Age of Empires developer World's Edge as part of the same reorganisation. Elsewhere in the restructuring, Ninja Theory is now considered at high risk of closure after two separate attempts to sell the studio both fell through, entering a formal employee consultation period, while Arkane Studios's Lyon location is being divested entirely, with consultation continuing under French law through the end of 2026.

Further changes across the reorganisation include Obsidian moving under Bethesda specifically to focus on a new Fallout project, Playground Games and Turn 10 merging while continuing work on Forza and Fable respectively, King taking over oversight of Microsoft's wider casual games portfolio, and Double Fine along with Compulsion Games being spun out as independently funded studios. Undead Labs has also been divested, with State of Decay 3 continuing development under a new publisher while remaining available through Game Pass. Xbox executive vice president and chief content officer Matt Booty summarised the overall progress, stating that the actions completed since July, including the various studio divestitures, bring the company roughly three quarters of the way through the previously announced restructuring.

Call of Duty's Activision to make next Halo game as Xbox cuts more jobswww.bbc.co.uk

[PlanckLimit]

Handing the next mainline Halo game to Activision rather than keeping it inside a dedicated Halo focused studio is a genuinely significant symbolic shift for one of Xbox's single most important franchises.

[Echo36]

268 more cuts on top of everything already announced this year is a brutal amount of ongoing instability for anyone still working across these studios, hard to imagine morale holding up well through a restructuring dragging on this long.

[R931]

Ninja Theory failing to find a buyer twice before entering formal consultation is a genuinely sad outcome for a studio that made Hellblade, that game specifically deserved a much more secure future than this.

[WormholeX50]

Spinning out Double Fine and Compulsion as independently funded studios rather than shutting them down outright at least suggests Microsoft is trying to be somewhat less brutal about some of these specific decisions.

[Rosie96]

Obsidian shifting focus specifically toward a new Fallout project under Bethesda is genuinely exciting on its own, though it does raise the obvious question of what happens to whatever else they were previously working on before this reorg.

[CMPunk02]

Three quarters of the way through a 3,200 job restructuring plan means there is still a real chunk of this pain left to come, hard to feel especially optimistic about Xbox's internal stability heading into next year based on that timeline alone.