Asha Shama, CEO of Xbox, has sent a message to all Xbox employees in which she announced the start of the «most significant restructuring in Xbox history.» As part of this process, the Xbox team will lay off approximately 3,200 people throughout fiscal year 2027. This is approximately 15% of its current workforce. Today, 1,600 jobs will disappear, while Double Fine, Compulsion Game, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will no longer be part of Xbox Game Studios.
Double Fine and Compulsion Games are once again independent, retaining their intellectual property, catalog and the projects they had underway. Double Fine joined Xbox Game Studios in June 2019, it is the studio responsible for Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Broken Age or Keeper, and is now once again owned by its founder Tim Schafer. The same thing happens with Compulsion Games (We Happy Few South of Midnight), which joined Xbox Game Studios in June 2018 along with Ninja Theory, Playground Games and Undead Labs. Of all of them, only Playground Games remains, the one in charge of Forza Horizon and the new Fable.
Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are also leaving Xbox Game Studios, but in their case they do so with a sales agreement and secured financing to complete the development of Senua and State of Decay 3, two games that we saw at the last Xbox Games Showcase and whose launch is scheduled for 2027. Now it makes more sense that both titles were not announced as an Xbox exclusive, as happened with Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution.
Sharma also talks about other cuts and redirection of investment towards other projects. These changes vary in magnitude between Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios. In addition, the executive assures that as part of this restructuring, no game that had been shown publicly has been canceled. Sharma adds that Mojang (Minecraft) and King (Candy Crush) will report directly to her, as they have become the largest platforms and studios in terms of monthly active players.
Finally, Xbox will undergo a simplification process. Sharma assures that in some areas of the company the work goes through up to 14 hierarchical levels. This number will be reduced to five and, «where possible», to three. The objective is for Xbox to be a more horizontal organization where there are direct managers who make decisions that generate results.