Jez is a fucking twat if he is wrong on this.

Playing with peoples livelihoods just to get the first scoop.

Fuck this asshole if he ends up being wrong.

I will legit block him on Bluesky if he ends up being wrong, Lol.

Many of Xbox's subsidiaries are getting hit by the layoffs this morning, including Call of Duty studios such as Raven. Big cuts at Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 - nearly 50% of staff, per source.

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 2 July 2025 at 17:43

50%. Forza Motorsport as an IP is dead then, sounds like they've been demoted to a support studio for Forza Horizon.

If Perfect Dark is really dead, I'm truly shocked by that one. While the development cycle has been long, and the budget therefore high, due to the original Drew Murray build of the Game being rebooted 3 years into development, the rebooted build has been in development for nearly 4 years (4 years in September) and they even had gameplay footage ready a year ago for the 2024 Summer Showcase, something Everwild's 2nd build and Blackbird never had. The only built-from-the-ground-up AAA studio in recent years amongst a sea of acquired studios, both Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider) and The Coalition assisting. If this game is cancelled, it's going to make even more people believe that Xbox is incapable of success that isn't bought with a big fat paycheck.

Satya is devoid of all creativity, his obsession with AI will destroy Microsoft's reputation and I still strongly believe will backfire on the company as a whole, this man doesn't understand nurturing talent at all because he doesn't care about talent or creativity or the arts, and like I said, Microsoft will NEVER understand the consumer business, their heads have been too deep in business for too long.

Microsoft is lucky that brand image doesn't really matter much to corporate clients but I would argue that brand image and reputation does matter somewhat to consumer facing businesses and Satya Nadella is almost looking like he is INTENTIONALLY trying to burn down Xbox's reputation, if the dudes goal was to make Xbox as hated as EA then I would say well done, you have achieved that.

EA will lose the crown of the most hated gaming company and Xbox will take over.

Then Microsoft expects to make waves with the PC community? Lol. We're talking about the same PC community who are devout loyalist to Steam and very conscious about who the shitty companies are? Who successfully boycotted Epic Game Store? And practically ever other PC launcher until they came crawling back to Steam? Who are now switching to Linux?

We're literally seeing recently developers get blasted for using AI so much that they're backtracking instantly and Microsoft thinks they're going to get away with ramming AI into their videogames? Lmao, maybe the console community will accept that but the PC community (who is Microsoft's future) are absolutely going to rip them apart and all this negative PR is going to turn people against the brand and the ecosystem.

Good luck winning over PC Gamers Microsoft.

FM did seem to do really bad... I was surprised they kept updating it for so long after how it looked to have performed.

The new FM wasn't my cup of tea but very sad to see that the series could be gone for a while.

Ryuu, I know we have a different take on those leakers :) But even if some may be legit, remember that most of them as making calls hoping to hit the jackpot. 
So at the end if this happens they will pretend that they "knew" it... 

Usually they would need to nix all your access before getting rid of you because a disgruntle ex employee may attempt to do harm before exiting the door.  Usually that is how you know you are gone before you get the call from HR.  Accounts do not work or removed.

I don't think we should give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt with any of these cancellations or closures, they might be in development hell, they might be in rough shape, blah blah. These layoffs are literally happening company wide, Microsoft is laying off 9000 employees in total, sales in particular is taking a huge hit, they're doing this 2 days after their Fiscal Year has begun and Satya has been banging on about AI taking over, I'm sorry but this is nothing but pure and utter greed to save a few bucks and drive that stock price higher after already making record breaking profits.

Anything being cancelled is far more likely because they don't think it will be a huge enough hit to drive their value up, even if said project would still be profitable. It doesn't mean anything was in development hell, it just means Microsoft wants to drive up their stock, Microsoft only thinks by the quarter and any moved saved from cutting projects will be diverted to garbage like AI.

You better be a massive project bringing in the big bucks or else your funding is going to AI, that is the new Microsoft. They're deciding whether to cut a project that may be a modest hit and bring in some profits but nothing noticeable to Microsoft's overall margins or divert that money towards the AI pit which is currently exploding their share price on some nonsense future promises.

No A-AA will be allowed, and even modest AAAs won't be allowed, they'd rather send that money to AI.

Damn. I know Forza Motorsport (2023) wasn't the huge success they wanted it to be, with the 2nd lowest critic score and lowest user reviews in the whole series, and lackluster player counts (#81 most played as of today on Xbox), but still, this one feels a bit harsh. 50% implies they will no longer be allowed to make Forza games of their own, that they are mainly being kept around to update the ForzaTech Engine and assist Playground with modeling cars to make sure the car count is high in Forza Horizon 6.