The Resident Evil movie is good and Destiny will return somehow: September 16-22 news

Hi readers,

I just started Control Resonant—one of the many games coming out in this jam-packed September—and I’ll have more to say about it in a future issue of this newsletter. Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to play it this week, and I’ll be traveling next week, so that issue probably won’t be until October. You can read a ton of reviews for that now ahead of its release on Thursday, September 24.

Coming out the same day are Silent Hill: Townfall and… Garfield: Escape from Monday, which apparently isn’t terrible according to some of my peers! The fall season is getting so crowded that the upcoming soulslike Valor Mortis will launch at a lower price just to stand out from the crowd.

Now, let’s get into the big story of the week, and surprise—it’s about Xbox again.

When Xbox announced its “reset” this past summer, we knew it was just the first wave of layoffs and other organizational changes. The Microsoft-owned division announced details of this reset’s next stage, which includes 268 additional layoffs. It appears that Halo Studios, which just recently shipped Halo: Campaign Evolved as its first (and I guess only) title under the studio’s new branding, has been hit the hardest.

Individuals laid off from Xbox include Halo Studios cinematics director Josh Daniels, who was let go the same week he received a promotion, and Gears of War: E-Day story director Juan Vaca, who had just celebrated the game going gold ahead of its October 6 release. Activision, the Xbox-owned publisher of Call of Duty, is now in charge of making the next Halo game—the publisher also now oversees Rare, the legendary studio behind Banjo-Kazooie and Sea of Thieves, and Age of Empires developer World’s Edge.

Meanwhile, Xbox-owned Bethesda will oversee studio Obsidian Entertainment, and Candy Crush maker King is absorbing the Microsoft Casual Games division. Forza Motorsport studio Turn 10 will merge with Forza Horizon studio Playground Games, which makes sense, considering that Horizon has emerged as the more successful Forza series. Playground is currently working on the reboot of Fable.

As previously reported, Compulsion (South of Midnight) and Double Fine (Psychonauts) already spun off from Xbox, and Undead Labs (State of Decay) has completed its transition as an independent studio as well, while also laying off a “significant” number of workers. While Arkane (Dishonored) is still in the process, it appears that Ninja Theory (Hellblade) is not as lucky, as “two separate agreements” for selling the studio off have fallen through. The studio, which just announced a new Senua game this summer, is likely to shut down.

If you take Xbox’s word for it, Activision won’t simply give Halo to one of its Call of Duty studios; instead, the next Halo game will be developed by a “new, purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty.” That’s to say, Halo won’t be beholden to the pipeline of Call of Duty development, but it’s unclear right now exactly who Activision will get to make this game.

I’d speculate that a new Halo will at least benefit from the production structure of Activision; while its output of Call of Duty games has been mixed, the publisher has at least put out a new game every year for more than two decades. And with many primary and support studios under the Activision umbrella, there is a lot of talent to siphon to Halo.

I doubt that the next Halo will be a Call of Duty game with a Halo skin, but with how little information we have about the next steps of the franchise, I wouldn’t blame anyone for assuming that that’ll be the case. Activision president Rob Kostich said in a statement that the publisher’s goal is to “make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place.”

Reports that Blizzard would suffer from mass layoffs alongside the rest of the Xbox division didn’t come to fruition this week, though this doesn’t preclude that from happening in the near future. Remember that Xbox announced that 3,200 workers will be terminated by the end of the company’s fiscal year, which still leaves over 1,300 more to be laid off in the coming months.

It’s unclear how King, the Microsoft-owned maker of Candy Crush, was affected by these layoffs, but last week, multiple unions were preparing to strike against the mobile game company.

Unrelated to Xbox and Microsoft, the studio behind the ill-fated MindsEye appears to be closing after multiple rounds of layoffs. Also in trouble is Heart Machine, the studio that made Hyper Light Drifter; the publisher that was initially set to fund its next title is no longer moving forward with the project, which led to the studio laying off “nearly everyone.”

(In this section, I’ll address a question or curiosity about gaming from readers. Submit your inquiries through this Google Form and read my explainer in a future newsletter!)

That’s all for this week. I’ll leave you with news of a brief update to Mario’s character models and logo, something that the internet is way too fixated on.

Good night, and watch out,
Chris Compendio