XBOX has announced the continuation of the June 2026 reset announcement, and will lay off 268 more individuals across its organization.
The reset continues. In a post to XBOX Wire, the executive VP and chief content officer at XBOX, Matt Booty, shared that developers would be laid off across “Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer.” This new wave of layoffs would be counted as part of the previously laid-out restructuring (what Asha Sharma called a “reset” in June 2026) of the company, and the news arrives fresh off the heels of Microsoft coming in to save Kojima Productions’ latest project, Physint, from cancellation at PlayStation. Following this new wave of layoffs, Booty claims the “reset” is now three quarters of the way complete.
Aside from cutting jobs, the post also details restructuring of studios, namely, that the next Halo title will be developed by Activision (with a small team at Halo Studios set to support). Matt Booty says, “The goal is to strengthen our franchises and games by operating fewer business units, aligning groups that already work closely together, and focusing our publishing expertise,” and they figure to do that by consolidating teams.
XBOX details: Activision will be expanding to encompass World’s Edge and Rare, Bethesda will encompass Obsidian (as previously announced) and Obsidian will continue work on Grounded and the new Fallout: New Vegas project, and King (makers of Candy Crush) will expand to Microsoft Casual Games. The last announcement is reserved for Playground Games. Now, Playground and Turn 10 will be combined into one studio.
While Double Fine and Compulsion Games landed on their feet as independent developers following the first Xbox Reset announcement, two agreements involving Ninja Theory fell through, and the studio now finds itself in consultation alongside Arkane (with the latter “expected to continue through the end of the year”). This means Xbox is proposing the closure of the studios while exploring other potential options.
XBOX is set to hold an internal October 6 town hall, which will bring remaining employees and teams together to take a look at what’s next for the company following these announcements, and Matt Booty describes the meeting as “an ALL-XBOX team to reflect on our progress and look ahead to one of the strongest game lineups in our history.”
