More big news is coming out of Xbox this week as the company looks to continue its reset.

There are a few things to go through here, but the headline for us is that Xbox is looking to leverage its purchase of Activision and consolidate more power into the subsidiary. So that means that several teams, including Halo Studios, Rare, and World’s Edge are now reporting directly into Activision.

It’s not clear whether there will be any significant changes over at Rare, but it’s also not clear exactly what the studio’s plans are for the years ahead. It’s still supporting Sea of Thieves, but its other project Everwild was also cancelled back in 2025.

As for Halo, development of the next major game will occur at Activision, though which specific team is unknown at this time. It could be that Activision will want to utilise an existing developer like Infinity Ward or Treyarch, or form a completely new one.

Halo Studios, meanwhile, saw its workforce reduced significantly (the announcement suggests that of the 268 new lay-offs, most were from Halo Studios) and will be reworked into a caretaker / support role for existing projects.

In what might be the most deflating news, it seems ever more likely that Ninja Theory, the developer behind Hellblade, will close completely. Xbox was negotiating a couple of deals to sell the studio, but these apparently fell through. Microsoft has now entered into a consultation process with employees at the studio.

That’s not all. Undead Labs, which is currently working on State of Decay 3, will become independent, with an unidentified publisher handling the new game. Meanwhile, Obsidian will now report directly to Bethesda as it continues work on a new Fallout game, while Forza Motorsport developer Turn10 will be merged into Playground Games, developer of the spin-off series Forza Horizon.

Wow. There’s no denying that Xbox is serious about shaking up its operations, but we’ll have to see how it all pans out. It also recently announced a partnership with Kojima Productions to publish Physint, a new “genre-defining” action-espionage title, after Sony decided to pull funding from the project.