This is turning into video gaming's Night of the Long Knives...

Yea, especially when we know how often games get announced simply for hiring purposes, more so than to even just let gamers know about them. 7 years is a long time for your game to not even be officially announced. 

So far, I can't exactly say that these cancellations shock me.

Perfect Dark would surprise me if true tho.

Also as someone who plays TESO...What a fucking stupid cancellation, they straight up changed how they deliver ESO content so that it was no longer a guaranteed huge expansion every year, which suggested to me they were winding down a little due to shifting focus over to their upcoming MMO. TESO is still very popular but it's over 10 years old now and they could have done with a new MMO taking over, especially as TESO feels dated now and all its zones are almost filled out.

We can see the trend emerging, any studio with a successful GaaS is not allowed to work a 2nd project, Microsoft has to play it safe for pure greed.

And then people would moan about it taking years to release...

Even MMOs back when videogames didn't take years to make, still took 3-5 years to create.

There was absolutely NOTHING out of the ordinary with Zenimax MMO's development time...

Just pure greed.

Can't wait for when in a few years from now, The Elder Scrolls Online popularity is dying down, and the MMO STUDIO has no backup because Microsoft cancelled their last MMO and MMOs take bloody 6-7 years at minimum to create nowadays, so Microsoft shuts down Zenimax Online, through no fault of Zenimax's, but because Microsoft fucked them over.

What happens to the new engine they were working on alongside the MMO too? Is that just scrapped now? I doubt TESO can just be "moved over" to it, what a complete waste.

Games that have been in dev or pre-dev for close to a decade without us knowing ANYTHING about them get cancelled

Ryuu: IT WAS GREED! NO OTHER REASON! JUST GREED!

I'm not happy about games being cancelled but all the games we've heard about right now are games we've never really seen or at least not in a version we could even argue if it would be good or total shit. So how are we supposed to know if it's smart or not from MS to stop these projects?

And if that new MMO just doesn't look as if it would have any chance on the market especially without a well known IP in it's name then yeah, no surprise. But we just don't know it...all we know is the info from a few insiders who have a few contacts who tell them that they think a project is great or not so great.

I don't see a problem in cancelling projects before they burn even more money (even if the company behind it has profits of like 100 billion a year). I have bigger problems with not investing again and again in new projects to look if something great will happen. 

Well, it sure as hell is not a decision based on strengthening diversity or creativity, or building a robust experienced developer base. This was a monetary decision, aka greed. Now you could argue these games had low value anyways (not only monetary but also entertainment and artistic value), but that wouldn't change the fact that the cancellation was made on financial reasons.

The majority of the jobs are probably not developer jobs but operational, marketing and so forth.  While getting hired in gaming is not a good deal, there are tons of jobs out there outside of the industry.  From a person who has been laid off a few times, I fear it not.  I have taken those really nice settlement packages gone and got a new job usually making more money and never looked back.  At first it does feel scary but you realize its just another opportunity.  In a few instances I have contracted back my services to the company that laid me off at twice the rate because they did not know what they were missing until it was gone.

It's an MMO bro, 7 years in development is absolutely nothing for an MMO. Final Fantasy XIV development began in 2005 and it released in September 2010, it took 5 years to make, and it was released in a horrific state, which resulted in them soft-rebooting the entire thing and adding even more development time. World of Warcraft was in development for 4-5 years.

This is back when your average "AAA" took about 1-2 years to make, not 4-5 like they do now, MMOs have ALWAYS been significantly longer in development than your average non-MMO AAA. So now when your average non-MMO AAA takes about 4-5 years to make, it is expected that MMOs would also significantly increase in development time, 7-10 years for an MMO would not be out of the ordinary for an MMO today.

There was absolutely nothing weird about how long Zenimax's MMO was in development for.

It's dumb to cancel the MMO that would have carried Zenimax for the next 10 years as The Elder Scrolls Online was winding down.