Perfect Dark and Everwild cancelled amid widespread Xbox layoffs

Microsoft has laid off hundreds of workers in its Xbox division, resulting in numerous project cancellations. Among these game cancellations are Rare’s Everwild and a reboot of the Perfect Dark series, with the latter’s developer, a new studio called The Initiative, for which Perfect Dark would have been its first game, being shut down.

As first reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, Microsoft laid off hundreds of Xbox employees, with a representative from Xbox acknowledging that the cuts were widespread without naming a precise figure. Studios from multiple areas of Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar gaming division were impacted by these layoffs. These include Candy Crush developer King cutting 10% of its employees (representing about 200 jobs) as well as the developers of Forza Motorsport, the Call of Duty franchise and Halo Studios. ZeniMax Online Studios, the developer of The Elder Scrolls Online, has reduced its workforce as well as cancelled an upcoming online game which had yet to be announced.

Among the more significant consequences of these job cuts is the cancellation of numerous high-profile games that had been publicly announced several years ago. One of these is Everwild, a mysterious fantasy game by Sea of Thieves developer Rare. The project was first announced all the way back in 2019, but experienced a turbulent development.

Another major cancellation is that of the Perfect Dark reboot, first announced back in 2020 to be developed by a new studio within Xbox called The Initiative. As recently as last year, The Initiative was revealing gameplay footage as part of the Xbox Games Showcase. Both the game and its developer have been shut down, with Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty writing in an email to staff that the job cuts and project cancellations “reflect a broader effort to adjust priorities and focus resources to set up our teams for greater success within a changing industry landscape.”

Layoffs are never good, especially when they are as widespread and significant as they are here. Microsoft’s gaming division has been roiled by multiple rounds of job cuts over the past 18 months while the company raises the price of Game Pass subscriptions in an effort to boost profits following multi-billion-dollar acquisitions that the company must account for. As with every time a major gaming company cuts a large number of positions, hopefully, the impacted employees find new roles soon.

UPDATE, 3 pm AEST: Xbox has reached out with a statement on the news. “We continue to implement organizational and workforce changes that are necessary to position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace.”, a Microsoft spokesperson stated on today’s layoffs.