Halo Goes to Activision, Ninja Theory Faces Closure: What Xbox's 'Streamlining' Means for Your Games

Satya Nadella says the "streamlining" at Xbox is "great to see." He said it on the Sources podcast with Alex Heath, as IGN reports, adding that he feels "fantastic" about the IP Xbox owns and its ability to turn it into great games going forward.

Honestly, my first thought wasn't about org charts. It was: okay, but which games? Because the week before that interview, Xbox published a post on Xbox Wire called "Continuing Our Reset," and it's basically a map of where your favourite series are going. So let's walk through it, franchise by franchise.

Halo: a new home at Activision

This is the big one. The next Halo will be made at Activision by what Xbox calls "a new, purpose-built team." A small team stays at Halo Studios to look after the Halo games that are already out and the community (GeekWire adds esports to that list). Activision also takes over World's Edge, the Age of Empires folks, and Rare.

I grew up on Rare games, so seeing that studio shuffled under a new umbrella gives me a little pang. But a publishing unit change isn't a closure, and I'd rather wait and see what they make than mourn early.

Forza and Fable: one studio now

Playground Games and Turn 10 are merging into a single studio that carries both Forza and Fable. For families who live in Forza Horizon (my nephew does), that's the one to watch. Two teams becoming one can mean shared tech, or it can mean stretched people. We'll see.

Obsidian, King and the rest

Obsidian moves under Bethesda and keeps working on Grounded plus a new Fallout project. King picks up Microsoft Casual Games, so yes, the Solitaire crowd has a new home too.

The part that hurts

Ninja Theory, the Hellblade studio, was supposed to be handed off to a new owner. Xbox says two separate deals fell through, and it's now consulting on a proposed closure while still looking for other options. Arkane's future is also unresolved, with consultations expected to run through the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Compulsion Games and Double Fine went independent (in August, per GeekWire), and Undead Labs has now been spun off too. The good news for Game Pass players: Xbox says State of Decay 3 will still arrive day one on Game Pass, just with a new publisher.

The same post confirmed 268 roles cut across Halo Studios, other first-party studios and Xbox Game Studios' management and central functions. That comes on top of the roughly 1,600 jobs cut earlier this year, which Quartz and others report is part of a plan to shrink the division by up to 3,200 roles over fiscal year 2027.

So, is it great to see?

Xbox promises "one of the strongest game lineups in our history," and I really want that to be true. But when I read Nadella's line, I think of Hellblade's team waiting to hear whether their studio survives, and of the Halo developers watching their series move to another building. IP is a name on a box. The people are the ones who make you care about it.

I'm rooting for State of Decay 3, for Rare, for whatever that merged Forza and Fable studio builds. And I'm hoping hard that Ninja Theory finds its other path.

Image: AlexZade / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xbox_Wireless_Controllers_(Xbox_Series_X_Blue_Controller,_Xbox_One_X_Black_Controller).jpg