Two Key Members Of Xbox Game Studios Are Stepping Down

And so the culling begins, pray for our studios everyone....pray.

Big changes afoot, but necessary changes. Sure, it will suck (mostly for them) but it is what it is. There'll be a couple of studios along the way that get shuttered too I imagine, or downsized, but that's just the nature of the biz. Interested to see what's what in the months to come.

Thank you for your contributions to Xbox over all these years. Not much more to add — it’s just the normal course of things. Some people join, others move on; nothing unusual.

Jumping before being pushed?

As harsh as the changes are, at least it is going from top down.
Something very similar happened to my company when a new manager stepped in. They looked at all their teams below and had a shuffle. Some did not survive the shuffle

Louise O'Connor should have been gone ages ago, she was behind the failed Everwild, couldn't get a game out in over 8 years and somehow got promoted!

Nooo!! Please god, no!!

He seemed like the wrong person for the job. His studio had development hell and yet he was promoted too be head of Xbox studio's?? Only one worse is Matt Booty utterly failing his way upward to being CCO. Seriously they need to look at obsidian or playground leadership. Or hire outside of Xbox’s broken studio leadership.

Now Hiring:

Looking for malleable simpletons who excel at towing the company line.

Yesmen/Yeswomen preferred.

Free thinkers and boat rockers need not apply.

It certainly seems like a major restructure is coming soon. Likely in the next 2 weeks as the fiscal year for Microsoft is just about to end.

Having a June showcase towards the end of their fiscal year might be a bad idea. They should be spending this time celebrating the announcements but they have been prepping us for some massive upcoming negative announcements. Every quote from xbox execs since the show has been about how bleak the business is instead of celebrating the future they laid out in the show.

Ooooo both ex Rare. Rare is about to get hit hard.

I never liked any of them as Rare's leaders.

Sounds like Rare might be on the chopping block. 😔

@oopsiezz They are not and they don't work at Rare now, in between. The most likely are Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Double Fine or Inxile.

@oopsiezz @Dodoo I’d be surprised if Rare were shut down! It feels like Sea of Thieves is still attracting millions of players across all platforms. But it’s true that aside from that, they haven’t done much lately — they seem a bit stuck in the past.... All they do is maintain an old game with mechanics that (in my opinion) feel outdated.

Small steps before they spin off Xbox into their own company

The right changes as hard as they may be.

@TheGameThrifter I was really looking forward to that and the Perfect Dark reboot. Sad we’ll probably never get either.

I can tell why they are departing. They were told what is fixing to happen to XGS and dont want to be a part of it.

Why did MS buy all these companies just to keep destroying thousands of people's life's. Such a **** company.

In case people are “totally losing their minds” as the Joker said in The Dark Knight, this is all about restructuring the XBOX brand as per Asha Sharma’s words.

She has committed to exclusives, Project helix, improvements to the Xbox dashboard and ecosystem.

This is not bad news.

No more Psychonauts, Pentiment, or South of Midnight. Everyone doing assets for the most rentable thing.