Just a few months after announcing layoffs of over 3,000 employees, Xbox has conducted another round of cuts. As part of the restructuring plan led by Sharma, 268 more Xbox employees have been laid off, and the management structure of several studios under its umbrella has been adjusted.
As part of this adjustment, Activision has taken over several development teams, including those working on the Halo series. Ironically, just one day before Xbox announced the new round of layoffs, an employee at Halo Studios had just been promoted, only to be laid off the following day.
Halo Studios developer Josh Daniels revealed on LinkedIn that he was among those affected by this round of Xbox layoffs, having just received a promotion the day before, on Monday. Daniels previously served as the studio's Cinematics Director and is a long-time employee within the Xbox ecosystem, having worked for the company in various roles for 11 years.
Daniels himself described the sudden change as "outrageous," and many netizens criticized Xbox's management structure in the comments, finding it hard to understand how the company could promote an employee one day only to lay them off the next.
Given that Halo Studios has been plagued by various issues in recent years, this development is not particularly surprising. Internal leadership problems at the studio had affected multiple projects in development, and poor team coordination even impacted the campaign content of Halo Infinite.
Furthermore, Halo Studios had previously canceled multiple projects in development, partly due to the team's difficulty in effectively managing the increasing workload. Therefore, Xbox's decision to seek new management for one of its most important IPs is easier to understand.
Now, Activision, the new "helmsman" responsible for the Halo series, has expressed its hope to create the best Halo game in the franchise's history, while also emphasizing its understanding of the IP's long development history.