Fallout and The Elder Scrolls will not be the only focus for Bethesda following Microsoft’s layoffs, as id Software is reportedly downsized.
Xbox has announced today that it will cut 3,200 staff members over this financial year, with 1,600 people being laid off immediately.
As part of this, Xbox is parting ways with five game studios; Compulsion Games and Double Fine are returning to independent studios, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold off, while Arkane Lyon is reviewing its ‘potential strategic options’.
However, other studios will also see layoffs, even if they’re not on the same scale. ZeniMax Media, for example, has also been hit and it owns not just Bethesda and Arkane but also id Software, MachineGames, and ZeniMax Online Studios.
According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Doom’s id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios, creators of The Elder Scrolls Online, have seen a ‘significant number’ of staff cuts today, but they are ‘not shutting down’.
Before any of these cuts were announced, reports suggested Xbox CEO Asha Sharma was looking to prioritise Halo, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout moving forward. However, according to Schreier, ZeniMax will still continue to work on other franchises beyond the latter two.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
‘ZeniMax will be impacted significantly by the reorganisation but will not be reduced to only Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, despite rumours over the last few weeks,’ he wrote on BlueSky. ‘The publisher will also still work on Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.’
Wolfenstein 3 has been rumoured for some time but never officially announced. Just recently, a WindowsCentral report claimed Microsoft is investing in the game’s developer MachineGames, following the success of Indiana Jones And The Great Circle and based on the popularity of the Wolfenstein franchise.
A TV show based on Wolfenstein is currently in development at Amazon, so it seems like Microsoft is hoping to replicate the success of the Fallout TV show – albeit with an actual new game to coincide alongside it.
The mentions of Doom and Quake are reassuring too, although if id Software is subject to significant cuts, as Schreier states, it’s difficult to tell what the future of each series’ will look like. Doom: The Dark Ages receives its first expansion, Revelations, tomorrow, although it’s unclear if another slice of DLC is being lined up after that.
Quake, meanwhile, hasn’t had a new mainline game since 2017’s Quake Champions. Like Wolfenstein though, a new entry has been rumoured for years.
Confusingly, it’s always been MachineGames that’s been rumoured to be making the new Quake, not id Software, but they’ve never been big enough to work on two triple-A projects at once. If Microsoft is looking to invest in them though, it may be that they’re trying to get them big enough that they can take on that size of workload.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.