Xbox have officially announced the scale of the mass layoffs and rejigging of their studio lineup which have loomed on the horizon for the past couple of weeks. While Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, and Arkane all face futures outside of Xbox, the cuts and changes have also affected how a number of studios remaining under the Microsoft banner will operate going forwards.

Prior to today, July 6th, a report from The Information claimed that pumping out new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games at a faster pace would be a key goal set as CEO Asha Sharma tries to steer the ship in a new direction with a heavier focus on established big series. Mirroring that, Sharma wrote in her email about today’s cuts that in addition to the studios leaving the fold, Xbox are “making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects”.

“These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios,” Sharma continued. “None of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions.”

According to Bloomberg’s report on the upheaval, while that does mean a “significant overhaul” for ZeniMax on top of a pivot to focus on big series like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, those two won’t become the only games left in town. Revived classic series Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein will continue to be worked on under the publishers. Though, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that id Software are laying off “a significant number of staff” as part of today’s cuts.

Looking to another PC mainstay, Sharma announced that Minecraft developers Mojang are moving to report directly to her. That’s part of efforts to wring as much as possible out of the square realm and King-developed mobile juggernaut Candy Crush, which the CEO argues have “increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players”.

According to Game File, Sharma reckons Minecraft’s been massively underinvested in over the past six-ish years, leading to lose ground to blocky competitor Roblox. While Roblox have been plowing money into growing their blockverse, Minecraft has instead reportedly been serving as a source of funding for Xbox’s various other gaming efforts. So, the suggestion seems to be that a lot more cash will be going back into Mojang’s sandbox.

Amid all the bad news, I’m glad to hear that any extra push on Fallout and Elder Scrolls isn’t seeing everything not on that level at ZeniMax chucked in the bin. As Edwin wrote in our story digging directly into the layoffs and studio spin-offs, best of luck to everybody at Xbox affected by these cuts.