Microsoft, on Wednesday, July 2, announced that it is laying off approximately 9,000 employees, which is around 4 per cent of its global workforce. Many of these layoffs are also impacting the company's Xbox division as well as other gaming studios, leading to some upcoming games being cancelled. In January 2024, Microsoft's gaming division had about 20,000 employees. While the tech giant hasn't clarified how many people were impacted in the Xbox division, the cuts seem to be widespread and significant and happen to be the fourth major layoff in the last 18 months. As part of the recent layoffs, at least three upcoming video games have been cancelled. In an internal email published by Variety and later confirmed by Microsoft, Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, said, "We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio. As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative." The Initiative was working on a reboot of the classic FPS series - Perfect Dark. The upcoming sci-fi espionage title has been under development since the studio opened back in 2018. Another title that is now cancelled is Everwild, a game that was under development for more than a decade by Sea of Thieves maker Rare. Founded in 1985 and acquired by Microsoft in 2002, Rare is known for games like Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007, Kinect Sports, Kameo and Banjo-Kazooie. Zenimax Online Studios, the developer of the popular massive multiplayer online game Elder Scrolls Online, is also impacted by the layoffs. As a result, the studio is also doing away with its upcoming MMORPG game codenamed Blackbird. According to Engadget, citing "a developer with knowledge of the situation", at least five employees at Halo Studios have been fired as part of the latest layoffs. The gaming studio currently has somewhere between 200 to 300 employees and is working on multiple games, including the next major Halo instalment. Forza Horizon developer Turn 10 Studios also reportedly laid off more than 70 people. Stockholm-based gaming studio King, which Microsoft purchased back in 2023 as part of its Activision Blizzard acquisition, is reportedly cutting 10 per cent of its staff. Known for making Candy Crush, a report by Bloomberg citing people familiar with the plans suggests that the recent round of layoffs impacted around 200 jobs. Some layoffs are also taking place at Raven Software, a studio known for making hit titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Singularity, Quake 4 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
