Xbox Reset Moves Halo to Activision - DTNS 5358

Tom Merritt (0:08)

Oh, this, this is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026 We tell you things you need to know, give you important context, and help each other understand.

Jenn Cutter (0:21)

Today, Xbox's reset continues with more layoffs, and Halo is moving to Activision.

Tom Merritt (0:27)

I'm going to try to understand why they're doing all of that. I'm Tom Merritt.

Jenn Cutter (0:31)

I'm Jenn Cutter.

Tom Merritt (0:32)

Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.

Jenn Cutter (0:36)

Okay. So there's a lot to get through here.

Xbox announced 268 layoffs across Halo Studios, Xbox Game Studios, and other first-party developers. Now, this is following the announcement back in July, that the company was going to lay off 1,600 people with another 1,600 to come over the rest of 2026 And a memo from Xbox CEO Ashish Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty at the time described this as the reset. So that's why we're all harping on, okay, the reset continues.

Dr. Niki (1:07)

Every headline says reset. Very long reset.

Jenn Cutter (1:10)

Today, Booty said the company is, quote, roughly three quarters of the way through previously announced restructuring. So at least we know where we are on this infinite reset. The bulk of the layoffs seem to have hit Halo Studios. You may be like, wait, who's that? And that's 343 Industries, if you remember them from back in the day. A small team there will remain supporting the Halo community in games, but Activision is going to make the next Halo game, which when I thought about it for a second, I was like, oh, right, they make super profitable shooters. Kind of makes sense to give them another giant IP to go through.

There are a few other studio moves.

Obsidian, Makers of Fallout, will move under Bethesda, which some people may think, wait, they weren't together already because a lot of people got them confused. So now you don't have to get them confused. They're the same guys. King will take over Microsoft casual games, and I guarantee everyone knows who King is because they're the Candy Crush people.

Playground and Turn 10 will merge. A lot of people were thinking like, wait, so why would Playground and Turn 10 go together? Isn't Turn 10 the Forza people? And Turn 10 is the Forza people, but they're like the regular Forza people. Playground made Forza Horizon, which sells way more than regular Forza because people like the arcadey stuff. And oh yeah, they do like fable stuff. So like this one kind of makes more sense than it may seem at first when you hear about it. And then there's Rare, currently best known for Sea of Thieves and not Donkey Kong Country if you are old like me and think about back when they were on Nintendo. And World's Edge, so Rare and World's Edge, which was Age of Empires, which is still going, they are now both under Activision. Couple more, we're almost done. And then there were Spinouts, Xbox spun out compulsion games and double fine productions as independent studios. You know, a lot of things ongoing in this month. Undead Labs, Stated Decay 3 is also independent now, so best of luck to them. There were two attempts to sell Ninja Theory that collapsed, and Xbox is now considering closing it. And Xbox is also considering options to sell, spin out or close France's Arcane Studios.

What's next? Well, Booty says they plan to tell folks what's up during an October 6th town hall meeting, so close, but also far away for everyone living under this uncertainty right now.

Tom Merritt (3:39)

Yeah, we want to know what the last quarter is. Then I guess October 6th is going to tell us what the last quarter of this reset is going to look like. By my count, there's still around 1300 layoffs that they said were going to happen still to come. So that's not small. I'm curious where that hits.

As far as you can tell, Jenn, are there any obvious studio moves left for them to make?

Jenn Cutter (4:05)

Well, obviously, I jumped into my Game Dev group chat when the rumors started last night and then official this morning. And one of them said, this sounds like they are building up to sell Activision. And I'm like, that's a big swing.

Tom Merritt (4:21)

Wow. Tin foil hat installed. I don't think they do that, but I understand why you might suspect that because it does look like they're putting the most valuable things under Activision and then spinning out anything else that might make the potential Activision product that you're selling look worse on the balance sheet.