Microsoft has announced a new wave of layoffs that will impact several franchises and studios across the board. These include Call of Duty, Rare, with Everwild, the developer's troubled action-adventure new IP, being canceled, as well as closing down The Initiative studio, canceling the upcoming Perfect Dark in the process.
It's a grim day for the industry. Sadly, as gaming seems to be as popular as it has ever been, the developers behind the scenes are constantly dealing with job insecurity. July 2 marked yet another wave of massive layoffs, with Microsoft laying off 4% of its workforce according to Windows Central, impacting multiple game studios under the Xbox umbrella.
The most egregious of them all is undoubtedly The Initiative being shut down without shipping even a single game. The developer was announced as a brand-new Xbox studio at E3 2018, alongside other studio acquisitions like Playground Games (Forza Horizon), Undead Labs (State of Decay), Ninja Theory (Hellblade), and Compulsion Games (South of Midnight).
It was rumored that the Perfect Dark project was going through a rocky development period. In 2021, the studio partnered with Crystal Dynamics to help smooth out the project. Sadly, reports a year later stated that key figureheads were departing the studio amid a lack of creative autonomy and a slow, tedious development process.
During the June 2024 Xbox Showcase, almost four years after the game was officially revealed at The Game Awards 2020, the first gameplay footage was shown. The crowd went mild.
click to enlargeElsewhere, while Rare continues to be a key studio within Xbox, thanks entirely to the perennial success of Sea of Thieves, the developer can't seem to break free from the high tides of its successful multiplayer title.
In the last 10 years, Rare has only shipped two titles: Rare Replay (2015), a collection of old Rare classics, and the aforementioned Sea of Thieves (2018). Everwild promised to be an ambitious action-adventure that would feature no combat at all, but plenty of systems that would make the player feel like they were in control of an ever-expanding, well, wilderness.
Whatever the future holds for Rare and the laid off staff, I hope they can land on their feet soon and deliver exciting projects for everyone to enjoy.
For more, stick with us at Gfinityesports.com: the best site for Xbox coverage.
For more articles like this, take a look at our news and Perfect Dark page.