Xbox is going through another major restructuring, and this time the changes affect some of the company's most recognizable franchises. Microsoft has confirmed hundreds of additional layoffs while reorganizing the way several of its internal studios operate, including a surprising change that puts the next Halo game under Activision.
The company has announced the elimination of 268 positions across Halo Studios, other first-party teams and Xbox Game Studios' management and central functions. Microsoft says these measures are part of the broader restructuring announced earlier this year, which is now approximately three-quarters complete.
But the layoffs are only one part of the story. Xbox is also reducing the number of business units within its gaming organization and moving several studios under different parts of Microsoft's gaming division.
One of the biggest changes involves Activision. The company behind Call of Duty will expand its responsibilities to include Worldโs Edge and Rare, while a dedicated Activision team will take charge of developing the next major Halo game. Halo Studios itself will continue to support existing games, but the future of the franchise is now being shaped from a very different structure.
This is a particularly significant change for Halo. The franchise has traditionally been closely associated with its own dedicated studio, but Microsoft is now placing its next major installment under a team connected to Activision.
The changes do not stop there. Bethesda will work more closely with Obsidian, including collaboration on a new Fallout project. Meanwhile, Playground Games and Turn 10 are being combined into a single organization responsible for Microsoft's Forza and Fable projects. King will also absorb Microsoft's casual games operation.
For players, these decisions could eventually have a much bigger impact than the organizational changes themselves. Microsoft's strategy is clearly moving toward fewer internal units and greater concentration of resources around its most important franchises.
This new structure follows the much larger reset announced by Xbox in July. At that time, Microsoft said it expected approximately 3,200 positions to be eliminated during the fiscal year, while several studios would leave Xbox and continue under independent ownership. The company explained that its previous structure had become too fragmented and expensive to maintain.
The latest announcement suggests that this process is far from over. Microsoft says the measures completed since July, including studio divestitures, have taken the company roughly three-quarters of the way through the restructuring.
That leaves an important question for the future of Xbox. The company now has fewer internal units, more franchises being managed across Activision and Bethesda, and a significantly different structure from the one it had only a few months ago.
For now, the most visible consequence is that some of Xbox's biggest names are changing hands internally. Halo, Rare, Age of Empires and Sea of Thieves are entering a new chapter, while hundreds of employees are leaving the company.
Xbox has described the changes as an effort to strengthen its franchises and simplify the organization. What this new structure ultimately means for the games themselves, however, will only become clear as these projects move forward.