Xbox |OT|

[Ryuu96]

EpicRandy said:

Those layoffs are certainly sad and angering. As someone who was the victim of mass layoffs in the past, I can relate to anyone affected.
I hope MS is better on this than my last job though, I got laid off with 0 compensation 2 days prior to a holiday so they didn't have to compensate me for the said holiday.

As for what it means for MS and Xbox projects I'll wait until the dust has settled and we know exactly the extent of those in affected studios.
for now, I assume most affected are from Hololens, edge, and marketing divisions with only a few dozen hitting the Xbox divisions. It may look like MS decided to axe the next campaign for Halo but doubt it because I would think that if it were the case they would have bundled this announcement with the layoffs ones.

Yeah...I don't think it changes much for Xbox's release schedule, as the hiring freeze was mostly lifted, never on Zenimax in the first place, despite all these layoffs, Zenimax is still hiring a near hundred employees and even though they were hit, it was mostly marketing and producer roles which in a awful way, Microsoft probably sees as replaceable or unneeded.

It looks like 343 took the absolute blunt of the layoffs, a lot of senior staff and mostly developers. Microsoft probably in the shittiest way possible saw the marketing roles as redundancies and decided to combine some of them and games tend to have dozens of Producers. I think 343 is incredibly poor timing, a combination of Infinite underperforming, 343's fuck ups and a change in direction makes them an easy target for Microsoft.

Unsure what it means for 343 now, the Campaign team was hammered, the MP/Forge team seems safe, I think the expansion plan is dead, I don't know what it means for future Halo Campaigns though, if they're going to change direction and go back to a more traditional release or what, I think they'll double down on Multiplayer for now and we'll see what their plans are for Campaign stories.

There are rumours that 343 is going to focus on MP whilst at the same time doubling down on being a sort of publishing house, like World's Edge, and they'll instead hand the Halo IP out to other studios and let them tell stories, I actually said one time that Microsoft should do something similar but in reverse, that Certain Affinity should take control of the MP and 343 should focus on the Campaign.

Guess if true, Microsoft wants the internal studio focused on the money maker. They'll no doubt be a "next Campaign" but question is what form it takes, a more traditional release from 343? From an outside studio? Does the F2P MP get revamped once the next Campaign releases? Will the F2P MP be entirely detached from the next Campaign? Will they stick with Slipspace for the Campaign? What if F2P BR takes off? Do they go back to a traditional MP release as well?

So many questions. Idk which is the best approach but I will say if the rumour that they might hand the IP out to external studios is true, I doubt companies want to work on Slipspace, they'll either want to work on their own engine or Unreal Engine. So if they're unwilling to do that, maybe 343 just takes a break on the Campaign whilst they slowly restructure.

Pierre is brand new leadership as well and proven himself with TMCC so I'll give him a chance, it could well be partly his decision to restructure the IP as well. No matter what I think we're waiting years for the next mainline Halo story, they'll starting from scratch.

But these layoffs fucking suck and are just sad, depressing shit, and definitely not the end of things.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 19 January 2023