Tag Archives: microsoft

Needless to say, this has been an awful week for Xbox, with thousands of developers being let go, several high-profile game cancellations and even a few studio closures. As Microsoft purpotedly began cancelling funding for third-party game projects, some fans became worried about the status of Kojima's upcoming Xbox game, …

One of the more surprising casualties from last week's Xbox layoffs was Romero Games. Founded by DOOM creator, John Romero, the studio was not owned by Microsoft, nor had any public business ties to the company. However, it turns out that Romero Games was working on a new shooter, with …

This week, Microsoft announced plans to let go of 9000 employees. Various studios within the Xbox unit were impacted, including Turn 10, which reportedly lost as much as half of its employees. Now, an ex employee has made the claim that Forza Motorsport has effectively been cancelled.  Former Turn 10 …

Since leaving id Software and DOOM behind, John Romero has been operating his own independent studio in Ireland. Over the last couple of years, Romero Games has been working on a new first-person shooter, but now the studio is closing after losing funding from its unnamed publisher.  In a statement …

In the wake of the latest round of lay-offs at Microsoft, sources revealed that Zenimax’s Project Blackbird MMO was “going well.”

The scope of the layoffs at Xbox studios continues to astound. Following the closure of The Initiative and several game cancellations, it has come to light that Turn 10 has been forced to fire half of its staff.  Turn 10 is the studio behind the Forza Motorsport games. Despite these …

As part of Microsoft's mass lay-off announcements yesterday, the Xbox team made another shocking decision. First-party studio, The Initiative, is closing immediately and the Perfect Dark reboot has been cancelled. The Initiative was announced by Microsoft back in 2019. The studio was billed as Microsoft's ‘AAAA' studio, that's right, quadruple …

Following initial rumours from last month, Microsoft has begun announcing its planned job cuts to internal studios. The full scope of the impact is still being determined but around 9000 layoffs are expected. Rare is reported as one of the studios affected, following the cancellation of Everwild.  Rare first announced …

Since completing the $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in late 2023, Microsoft has been looking to pump up Xbox's profit margins. That effort has already led to several rounds of job cuts, with another now set to take place this week.  Last month it emerged that Microsoft was intending …

Following the overhaul of 343 Industries / Halo Studios, the team have teased that the future of the franchise will be shown off this October.

The past couple years for Xbox has been a bit of a whirlwind. From spending almost $100 billion on acquiring studios to becoming a 3rd-party games publisher, the future of Xbox is somewhat unclear. According to one of the founding members of Microsoft’s Game Studios (who worked at the company since 1995) “it looks like Xbox has no desire or literally can’t ship hardware anymore.”

Microsoft's End-of-Life plans for Windows 10 have been known for years. The OS is hitting its end-of-life date this October, which typically means no more free security updates and no more feature updates. However, Windows 10 users will have the option of opting in for a year of ‘extended support'. …

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Enhanced is coming to PS5 (and Xbox/PC) this August – bringing new features, a performance mode and more.

Since completing the $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in late 2023, Microsoft has been looking to pump up Xbox's profit margins. That effort has already led to several rounds of job cuts, with another now set to take place starting this week.  Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has learned that Microsoft …

As part of the recent announcement of the ROG Xbox Ally, one of the biggest unique-selling-points for the upcoming handheld from Microsoft is its supposed tight integration between hardware and software – with Microsoft promising that players won’t be tied down to a single digital storefront. In aid of this effort, the company has now begun to detail its upcoming ‘Aggregated Gaming Library’ feature.

The whispers surrounding AMD's next-generation graphics architecture are picking up. While definitive branding remains unknown, with names like UDNA and RDNA 5 still circulating, it's becoming increasingly evident that this architecture represents a significant leap for discrete graphics cards and the semi-custom chips targeting the next-generation game consoles. Kepler_L2 (via …

Though yet to be officially confirmed, insiders are claiming that Microsoft plans to release their ROG Xbox Ally handhelds in late October.

We first caught wind of Bethesda's unannounced game, SpyTeam, thanks to a Zenimax trademark filing in 2022. The game has disappeared from headlines since 2024, but that finally changed this week with new trademark filings. 

Microsoft is reportedly set to enhance its Xbox cloud game streaming servers with lower lag, improved bitrates, and higher resolution options.

The danger with subscription services is the ever looming threat of monthly price increases. As it turns out, both Sony and Microsoft may have price increases coming in the near future, for PlayStation+ and Game Pass.  As part of Sony's annual business update this week, Hideaki Nishino, CEO of SIE, …

Following the announcement of the ROG Xbox Ally, Microsoft appears to have cancelled all their plans for an internally-developed Xbox handheld.

Microsoft concluded its recent Xbox Games Showcase event with a lengthy deep-dive into the upcoming The Outer Worlds 2. While it appears to be a solid sequel to 2019’s AA affair, the game has seen some backlash for being the first in Microsoft’s new $80 push. Though unsurprising, the team at Obsidian have confirmed that the price was dictated by Microsoft, not them.

Ever since Microsoft began to bring its library of Xbox titles over to the PlayStation, we’ve seen two of the console’s ‘Big Three’ added – those being Forza Horizon 5 and the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day. It appears as though the 3rd pillar of the Xbox brand is set to branch out, with datamined APIs suggesting that Halo is coming to PlayStation “very soon.”

At the Xbox Games Showcase this week, Microsoft officially announced this year's Call of Duty game – Black Ops 7. Microsoft has a legal agreement with Nintendo to release COD titles on Nintendo consoles for the next decade but so far, Black Ops 7 appears to a no-show. As part …

As part of Microsoft’s deep-dive into The Outer Worlds 2, it was confirmed that the game will include both a first and 3rd-person mode.

A small portion of the Xbox Games Showcase was dedicated to hardware. During the showcase, Microsoft officially revealed its new collaboration with Asus ROG, resulting in a new Xbox-themed ROG Ally gaming handheld. 

Despite launching weeks later, Forza Horizon 5 has already outsold Assassin’s Creed Shadows on PS5 – currently sitting at 2.2 million copies sold.

According to the former co-founder of Playground Games, Forza Horizon 5 has made more revenue than “Gran Turismo, F1, Need For Speed and The Crew put together.”

With the Summer game announcement season officially underway, many studios have begun to tease their plans for the coming weeks. Ahead of the impending Xbox Games Showcase, Undead Labs – the team behind State of Decay 3 – have released a cryptic teaser image online.

Roughly one year ago, Microsoft made the shocking announcement that they would be closing down Tango Gameworks – the publisher’s only Japanese studio who also happened to release the critically acclaimed success “in all key measurements” Hi-Fi Rush. Fortunately, the studio was saved thanks to publisher Krafton last August. Finally Tango Gameworks is ready to step back out of the shadows.