New details emerge on affected studios following Xbox lay-offs

Following weeks of leaks and rumours, Microsoft finally made it official that they would be parting ways with 5 of their previously-acquired studios while also letting go of more than 3000 employees – half now, and the other half throughout the year. While details were somewhat light at the time, we have now gotten a clearer picture on how this is impacting Xbox Studios.

In the immediacy following the Xbox announcement, reports started popping up uncovering some of the less pleasant aspects of this recent shake-up. While we previously spoke on the fact that id Software have reportedly lost around half of its entire workforce, new details have emerged regarding Xbox’s other studios.

As discovered by the publication GameFile, new WARN notices released by multiple US states show just how wide-sweeping these recent lay-offs have been. According to these notices, Obsidian Entertainment is losing 52 workers (around 25% of its developers), with Zenimax Online Studios and Zenimax HQ seeing 213 and 166 lay-offs respectively.

Additionally, known insider Jason Schreier recently claimed that this marks a “big pivot” for Obsidian, with The Outer Worlds studio having its sequel to Avowed cancelled in favour of working on a new Fallout game.

As mentioned previously, we will likely continue to learn more about how exactly each studio is being impacted as the days progress. Either way, this is a dark time for the games industry.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of these new details? Will Xbox recover from all of this? Let us know down below.

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