Following Reset Notice, Xbox Prepares to Shut Down Several Studios

The past few months Xbox has desperately tried to reinstate its name as a game industry giant that produces the best games, and the most powerful consoles. The biggest push along this trajectory has been Asha Sharma and Matt Booty's announcement of "Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset."

Somewhat uncharacteristically for a corporate announcement, the two of them went mask off and plainly said that the company is losing profits, which cannot continue, and that they have "overextended." Combined with the rather condescending "for some of you, these realities will be surprising and even frustrating to discover," it's basically corpospeak for "we messed up, and now many of you will lose your jobs."

Not even a week has passed since that announcement, and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has already shared a scoop that confirms all suspicions. According to his sources, several studios under Xbox Division are preparing for potential closure. Their only chance at survival is not to either buy themselves out and go indie, or to get bought by another company.

Neither scenario is promising. The former would mean spending a lot of money and likely losing much of the staff in the process to keep the studio afloat. The latter is simply not too likely given the state of the industry. Publishers are already not very eager to invest, but it's even less likely if your recent portfolio doesn't include wildly successful releases.

Currently we know that Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and Compulsion Games are among the ones affected, but as Schreier points out, it's not just them. While Mojang, The Coalition (Gears developers), Playground, Turn 10, Halo Studios, and Rare (currentl shackled to Sea of Thieves) are probably fine, it's hard to say the same about anyone who is working on less profitable projects.

Considering InXile is still working on one of Xbox's two future exclusives, it leaves concern for Obsidian and and World's Edge. The latter have been mostly working on Age of Empire games, which are doing exceptionally well by genre standards, but aren't necessarily huge hits. The former is also a legendary RPG studio that has been somewhat reliably putting out good games, but between The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, they're sitting on multiple underperforming titles.

Safe to say, if you were hoping for a new Killer Instinct, it's not too late to give up. Microsoft has already showcased that they're only comitted to IPs that historically brought them a lot of profit and popularity: Gears of War, Halo, and Forza Horizon.