The Xbox News Looks Really Bad - WAN Show June 19, 2026

**Linus Sebastian** (0:00)
On June 26th, Super Grilla arrives in theaters.

**Luke Lafreniere** (0:03)
Let's go.

**Dan Tsai** (0:06)
Your powers are gonna take in now.

**Linus Sebastian** (0:09)
This is very impressive. Get ready for a movie event unlike any other.

**Luke Lafreniere** (0:13)
Superman sees the good in everyone, and I see the truth.

**Linus Sebastian** (0:16)
Get your tickets now for the most fun. Krypto! And fresh movie of the summer. What are you going to do? Something stupid. No, it's a party.
DC's Supergirl, only in theaters June 26th. Get tickets now. Rated PG-13, may be inappropriate for children under 13

**Luke Lafreniere** (0:30)
Welcome to The WAN Show. We have a wonderful show lined up for you guys this week, but it does have to start with some bad news. Remember some of the trepidation that we had about Xbox's new leadership?
Well, it looks like things were going pretty good for a bit, and then a boom, rug pull. Back to the bare floor trepidation we had before. Things are not looking good over there right now, with rumors of potential studio closures or divestments or even spinning off Xbox entirely from Microsoft. There's some good news this week, though. Illinois may become the first US state to ban drivers from wearing smart glasses. Seems like a smart move. What else we got?

**Dan Tsai** (1:23)
The Steam Workshop was used to spread malware and stop killing games was ruled against.

**Luke Lafreniere** (1:32)
Okay. Those are choices.
The show is brought to you today by OpManager Nexus, Cape, Redtiger and MotionGrey, alongside our rap partner Dbrand and our chair partner Razer, and also our laptop partner also Razer. Why don't we jump right into the Microsoft stuff? I wouldn't even normally necessarily be 100% on talking about this because I personally feel that rumor mill stuff is best addressed once the rumors go away and the actual stuff happens. But there's been a lot going on at Microsoft this week. The information reported on Friday that Microsoft is even weighing options regarding Xbox's future that could include a potential spin-off, restructuring it as a wholly owned subsidiary like LinkedIn and GitHub, or as some kind of a joint venture. The word on the street is things are not doing too good right now. Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Double Fine are just a few of the studios that are either closing or rumored to be closed or they could be searching for a buyer. Satya Nadella has approved Asha Sharma's plan to focus on successful franchises like Halo, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Now this was not even something that I read online, which of course is credible when you read something online. This was something that someone internally said that they heard from people and was just chatting with me about. But what I heard from a person, some person, is that as far as they know at Bethesda, if you're not working on Fallout or Elder Scrolls, you might as well just forget about having a job right now.
None of this has actually been announced. I don't think there's been any internal memos confirming any kind of mass layoffs or anything like that. But I guess what I'm trying to figure out right now, Luke, is f***ing why.

**Dan Tsai** (4:16)
If you're not working on Fallout or Elder Scrolls, I think it's interesting, because I can't imagine there's a huge team working on continued DLC for Starfield. The why in regards to shutting down studios, I honestly have no idea. Especially if they're trying to push for...

**Luke Lafreniere** (4:36)
No, no, no. Hold on, I want to go back farther than that.

**Dan Tsai** (4:39)
Sure.

**Luke Lafreniere** (4:40)
Why did they spend all these billions and billions and billions of dollars...

**Dan Tsai** (4:44)
Just to shut them down?

**Luke Lafreniere** (4:47)
Buying gaming companies that, by all accounts, were apparently doing well enough that they were worth billions and billions of dollars, only to turn around and go, well, what's going on here? Why are we investing so many billions of dollars?

**Dan Tsai** (5:04)
What's that? Yeah, this has never made sense to me. The weirdest thing to me is they're not even the only ones doing it. I don't remember the name of the other company, but there's another company that just keeps buying up gaming studios and shutting them down.
I don't get the point.
Never understood the point. I bet you chat's going to point it out. Not Tencent, no. Embracer Group. Yeah. Embracer just...

**Luke Lafreniere** (5:24)
What a name.

**Dan Tsai** (5:26)
Yeah.

**Luke Lafreniere** (5:29)
What's that meme called? Is that the hug meme?

**Dan Tsai** (5:34)
Studios has Embrace... Embracer Group shut down. Let's see.