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In the midst of layoffs across the majority of Xbox, Microsoft has announced Mojang and King will play a more centralised role in its future plans.
Within a lengthy "resetting XBOX" post on Xbox Wire, CEO Asha Sharma addressed the strategy to reduce 3,200 Xbox jobs through FY27, devest several studios, and highlighted Mojang and King as key development teams in the reset.
"In addition, Mojang and King will now report directly to me. These two studios have increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players. They bring critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX."
It comes as no surprise that both studios are positively viewed by Xbox. Since Microsoft acquired Mojang in 2014, Minecraft has become one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world, from spin-off games to Hollywood box-office success. As for King, the developers of Candy Crush Saga have garnered massive popularity in the mobile gaming scene dominating app stores for well over a decade.
Mojang and King are also currently co-developing Minecraft Blast together for Apple iOS.
Its clear the CEO is looking at ways to continue growing beyond console and believes Mojang and King have managed to achieve something critical that could help Xbox reach its goal of entertaining "more than a billion people each day".
Sharma may have singled out Mojang and King who will now report directly to her, but the Xbox boss also states how Xbox will reset its platform in terms of management layers going forward:
"We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger. Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management...We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3."
Xbox Game Studios has nine studios under its umbrella, Mojang included, and its worth mentioning we don't know for sure which of them already report directly to her. For more on all of those studios, check out our related story below.