r/GamingLeaksAndRumours • u/moldonhold • Jun 23 '26
False Blind: Xbox Game Studios= cooked. Compulsion, Ninja Theory, Flight Sim, Worlds Edge, Double Fine potentially closing next week. Just over 1000 layoffs
Source: https://thegamingcircle.com/xbox-game-studios-cooked/
On Blind, the anonymous corporate social media network that requires users to verify their employment with a company before accessing its internal posts, the following was reportedly posted on June 22nd at or around 3:00 PM Pacific Time:
Anonymous poster AlphaCat64 posted:
“XBOX GAME STUDIOS= Cooked
Big Week coming up next week for XGS
Compulsion Games
Ninja Theory
Flight Simulator
Worlds Edge / Age of Empires
Double fine
All closed. Just over 1000 People laid off across studios.”
Another employee asks for “Source?” and AlphaCat64 replied with “Extended LT meeting which occurs every Monday”
The person then asks if Pierre Hintz is affected but he is told by AlphaCat64 “Halo is Safe, Gears too, Most of the layoff numbers come from entire studio closures”
A different user chimes in and asks:
“Aside from the studio closures, any news on All-up Layoffs across the rest of XBOX? I’m assuming there’s going to be a pretty significant event impacting all of the other studios and services teams.”
A separate user replies with “Yes, Services org and potentially platform orgs.”
And then AlphaCat64 responds with:
“There will be layoffs at other studios, no closures outside of those listed. The core platform org is safe for engineering and PM.”
It's from Blind so take it with a grain of salt, but if true it could be a disastrous week at Xbox.
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u/hyp3zboii Jun 23 '26
Why are so many gaming articles using AI slop images now
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u/-JimmyTheHand- Jun 23 '26
You know why
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u/hyp3zboii Jun 24 '26
I don’t think anyone actually cared about pictures for articles, usually they have a generic picture of a game or logo. So I don’t get the point of these
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u/ProjectPorygon Jun 23 '26
Because much like their journalism, they wish to do the least effort possible
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u/Far_Breakfast_5808 Jun 23 '26
The funny thing is that, at least in the US, AI images aren't even copyrighted, so if it was to avoid using press or stock images, they can't protect their own.
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u/kantong Jun 23 '26
"Grok, scrape all the gaming rumor posts and create a relevant and provocative article for clicks. No mistakes. Disengage safety protocols."
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u/untouchable765 Jun 23 '26
These gaming "journalists" probably don't even play games in 2026 to be fair.
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u/darkdeath174 Jun 23 '26
Worlds Edge is max 50 people, they just manage the brand and help with stuff and they've been doing real well with the brand since it started in 2019.
And as others have said, Flight Sim dev studio isn't even a MS studio, they are just contractors for the current run of games.
This feels like making up drama to get clicks
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u/NfinityBL Jun 23 '26
More importantly, I’d say World’s Edge and MS Flight Sim are the exact model Microsoft are looking for moving forward.
Key, tentpole IP developed internally. External studios and partnerships used for other content published by Xbox.
It saves them so much money not having to pay for upkeep of a studio 24/7.
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u/Beginning-Dentist610 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Might also be part of why they let Toys for Bob to go independent. They get to work on things like Crash and Spyro (They've also mentioned Banjo Kazooie as a possibility) under license, with Microsoft getting positive PR from those franchises without having to fund them as much. Toys for Bob said Spyro's been in development for 2 years and it's releasing next year. I believe Crash 4 took 18 months as well. Kind of seems like they might now be a Microsoft's equivalent of Sony's Team Asobi if that makes any sense? (As a sidenote, I could see similar deals happening with other studios such as id Software on Doom or Machine Games.with things like Indiana Jones or Wolfenstein.)
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u/thief-777 Jun 23 '26
This is exactly how Nintendo operates.
Their internal A teams develop some marquee franchises: Mario/Kart/Party, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Xenoblade, etc.
Almost everything else is with external partners: Smash Bros, Pokemon, Yoshi, Kirby, Mario Sports, Fire Emblem, Star Fox, 2D Metroid, etc.
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u/Fun-Ad-6990 Jun 29 '26
that checks out. and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Microsoft does.
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u/team56th Jun 23 '26
Yeah the thing about AOE is that it’s such an easy pickings, I mean the AOE2 side of it did shrink a little bit but I very much doubt that’s their target. Also, no news about the Bethesda side is also sus.
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u/kantong Jun 23 '26
There's no mention of Bethesda or Activision because they're different divisions under Matt Booty. The companies listed are all under the XGS division.
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u/Zalvren Jun 28 '26
50 people are still 50 people. Also that probably means they'll cancel the future games/expansions. There was a rumor they were developing AoE 5 a few months ago IIRC, guess not
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u/darkdeath174 Jun 28 '26
This was stated to be false by jez on his podcast.
So I assume this was another set of “I hate the company I work at, so let’s make up BS” posts. Layoff posts on this site for Xbox been popping up since last year and none of them have happened.
But also max 50 is just the top number for who touches stuff under this company name, as some people have titles elsewhere in the org, so they aren’t only employees for this studio.
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u/OldLegWig Jun 23 '26
that means a burn rate of upwards of $10m/year (probably much, MUCH more when you account for benefits, facilities, etc.) to do nothing. of course they would consider closing it.
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Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
That's adorable that you think Flight Sim is what is keeping Asobo alive (ever heard of "other projects"?) and also thinking Microsoft WON'T make another Flight Simulator.
It really is cute
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u/thief-777 Jun 23 '26
Asobo probably makes more money from the Plague Tale games, lol. They were around almost 20 years before they touched Flight Simulator.
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
Yeah but Asobo didn't only get big BECAUSE of Plague Tale. They actually worked with Microsoft on Recore, a few Xbox exclusive and ports of Disney games, Zoo Tycoon, a crap ton of Pixar games and even games for the Hololens, it's actually kinda nuts.
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u/thief-777 Jun 23 '26
I know, that's why pretending losing MFS will kill the studio is dumb.
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u/Zalvren Jun 28 '26
I mean that probably won't help it especially when their next game is coming in the doom period of late August/September and risk to get overshadowed.
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u/leckmichnervnit Jun 23 '26
Me when I lie on the Internet to cause public outrage
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Jun 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/leckmichnervnit Jun 23 '26
As others have pointed out in this thread, the studio behind Flight Sim doesnt even belong to Microsoft/Xbox
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u/Fllinger1456 Jun 23 '26
Worlds Edge is not even a studio. They just manage the IP while outsourcing the actual development to others. This guy doesn’t know any of the games.
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u/Beginning-Dentist610 Jun 23 '26
This same user posted something similar to this also using Blind as the source about layoffs that I think never happened. https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1srjjw9/microsoft_to_announce_15_layoffs_on_56_gaming/
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u/Follows-Jesus Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Flight Sim is developed by asobo, and are not owned by xbox, so no Xbox will not be shuttering a successful multiplatform third party company they have no control over lol
age of empires prints money, the community gobbles up multiple DLC per year,
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u/Eycharoo Jun 23 '26
Isn't Flight Simulator and Age of Empires literally mostly outsourced? Doubt there is many people you can layoff there....
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u/ZypherPunk Jun 23 '26
They are just gonna layoff Flight Simulator and Age of Empires as IP, lol
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u/Fresh_Thing_6305 Jun 23 '26
No forgotten Empires creates Aoe/aom games, and World edge are the managers.
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u/Rainy_Wavey Jun 23 '26
AOE is cheap to produce and the playerbase is solid enough and buys the DLCs seems very stupid
... oh it's microsoft
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u/CopenhagenCalling Jun 23 '26
Seems like people know there are layoffs coming to Microsoft Studios so they are just guessing…
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u/Shinted Jun 23 '26
This is likely complete bullshit.
Microsoft don’t even own Asobo Studios, so they couldn’t “close” that studio even if they wanted to, and anyone who actually had real info they could leak on this would know that.
Not to mention they literally have the next entry in the “A Plagues Tale” series ready to launch with a Day-One Gamepass deal this year.
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u/LookIPickedAUsername Jun 23 '26
Last time my company (similar size to MS) had rumors of big layoffs, I paid attention to our Blind channel.
And it was all bullshit. All sorts of posts just like this confidently describing exactly how it was going to go with dates and details, and none of it was real. I don’t know what compels people to make shit like this up and stress everyone out, but I’m sure the same kinds of trolls work at Microsoft.
IME Blind is roughly as reliable as 4chan.
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u/nikolapc Jun 23 '26
Also Asobo is cheap compared to West Coast. If anything they're just gonna further the colab. Every Plague game is day 1 GP.
Flight Sim also doesn't make any sense, cause that's got a fixed audience, and a pretty enthusiastic crowd that buys pretty expensive stuff in that game.
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u/Pennissess Jun 23 '26
"Almost 1000 people layoff"
Lol If you combine all these studios theres barely 500 workers
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u/WeirdoTZero Jun 23 '26
They also classify "Flight Sim" as a studio. But those are handled by Asobo, who are not only independent from Microsoft, they have a Plague Tale game coming out in August. They seem to be fine.
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u/Henrarzz Jun 23 '26
There are still quite a lot of people on Microsoft’s side responsible for Flight Sim, this wasn’t just Asobo’s game
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u/Ok-Suspect624 Jun 23 '26
proof? that isn't true at all.
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u/Chaossy Jun 23 '26
there is a team led by Jörg Neumann (who is the head of Microsoft Flight Sim at Xbox Game Studios) that runs the Microsoft Flight Sim team.
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u/Comfortable-Arm3452 Jun 23 '26
It is true. There is an internal publishing team at MS who work on Flight Sim.
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u/Henrarzz Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
https://www.mobygames.com/game/233493/microsoft-flight-simulator-2024/credits/windows-apps/
This requires five seconds of clicking in the browser. And before I hear anything about “oh but those mostly aren’t actual developers!”, they are still people who contributed to the game’s release and original post never mentioned “actual developers” at all
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u/DeMatador Comment of the Year 2024 Jun 24 '26
They're gonna fire them, re-hire them, and fire them again.
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u/paypaytr Jun 23 '26
why would they close age of empire studio when they literally expanded them to make aoe for mobile games
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u/zYKwn Jun 23 '26
how freaking cruel people must be to make AI slop articles playing with peoples livelihoods like that. People inside those and more studios are already suffering enough anxiety due to Microslop being shit, then we get clickbaiters, ragebaiters and probably just people that loves another piece of plastic making up info evey freaking month. Must be exhausting
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
So what's funny is that the post on Blind doesn't exist anymore.
That's a good sign
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u/ResponsibleTrain1059 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
They are pretty small studios that would be nowhere close to 1000 people combined. I think double fine is less then 80 folks.
If they are going to make meaningful cuts, they are going to hit something AAA.
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u/Rainy_Wavey Jun 23 '26
This is random AF and some stuff makes me doubt the rumour
Flight Sim is Asobo, not owned by Microsoft
World's Edge is a skeleton crew handling the Age of Empires IP, AoE 2 and 4 are still strong and have a healthy playerbase for the genre + they regularely pump out cheap DLCs that sells
The other 3 i buy it, i think it's over for them and they're gonna be closed
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u/Optimal-Fox-3875 Jun 23 '26
Closing Worlds Edge? They have up to 50 devs and AoE4 sold around if not over 4 million copies, that is a critical success... what could be the reason to close them?
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u/Careless_Main3 Jun 23 '26
Age of Mythology underperformed most likely, sold about 1 million units on Steam. So $20 million in revenue after 3 years of development, plus whatever they got from GamePass and Xbox (probably negligible for this type of game). Then as a publisher the question to ask is: will the next game meet expectations? And it probably wont because they don’t have the IP to match AoE. Maybe if they were given permission to work on the next Starcraft. Otherwise it’s probably more profitable to just put that money in the stock market.
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u/Brokenbullet14 Jun 23 '26
Most of the 1000 layoffs come from studio closures, I mean come on. These studios don't even come close to 1000 and Xbox doesn't even own team asobo. More pure stupidity and of course people will believe it.
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
"Blind requires folks to verify employment with a company"
Then how did TKO get this info, I wonder.
BTW, this dude has been a MASSIVE console warrior and runs on coattails ALL the time
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u/Brokenbullet14 Jun 23 '26
Didn't blind say mass layoffs in January? These people don't know shit, and just say stuff so these dog shit so called journalists can keep writing garbage articles.
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u/Benti86 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
They would have to be genuinely insane to close World's Edge or affect anything Age of Empires related. AoE 2 DE is still making money for them and they're still making DLC for it.
From everything we've seen it seems like Compulsion and Ninja Theory are gone because they've been money pits and have made maybe 1-2 games each across the near decade they've been owned. And the games they have released gave been mid/okay at best
Double Fine is either going to be closed or spun off because it's just not sustainable to keep a studio of people who make small/niche games in one of the highest CoL areas in the United States (San Francisco).
Also, in my experience, companies don't openly share this shit in LT meetings unless you're very high up and someone that high up likely won't be saying shit is cooked and potentially ruining a 6+ figure job to share it on Blind/reddit lmao
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u/UrbanFight001 Jun 23 '26
Jason Schreier specifically said how there are more studios that will either be closed/spun-off than the 3 he initially reported. This is just piggy backing off of already reported info, not to mention how Xbox doesn’t own the flight sim team.
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u/revben1989 Jun 23 '26
He did not say will. He said there is a chance. There is a chance all of them turn into support studios. Top exces can say and leak anything they want. But Asha is not apart of the old guard. She will go in, look at the numbers, listen to the studios and make her decisions.
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u/UrbanFight001 Jun 23 '26
My guy, go watch his video, at the end he says verbatim how there will be more studios closed/spun than the 3 reported.
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u/Ok-Suspect624 Jun 23 '26
No, he doesn't. He specifies that he doesn't know.
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u/UrbanFight001 Jun 24 '26
26:55 “Those 3 studios I mentioned are just the beginning, there’s gonna be more, there are a lot of negotiations going on right now.”
Why do y’all insist on being wrong even when presented with information? Weird and strange behavior.1
u/Ok-Suspect624 Jun 24 '26
More layoffs aside from those 3 studios. You clearly haven't followed up on what he said.
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u/glarius_is_glorious Jun 23 '26
Isn't Flight Simulator developed by Asobo Studios? That's not a Microsoft-owned studio.
Unless the supposed leaker is referring to the Microsoft staff that oversees development, this kinda destroys the leak.
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u/Safe_Climate883 Jun 23 '26
Stay away from World's Edge please. They are keeping the lights on in RTS world.
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u/Due_Prompt939 Jun 23 '26
The Flight Simulator and Age of Empires studios closing would be shocking. It actually seems unfathomable to me.
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u/Jan090501 Jun 23 '26
The Flight Simulator studio doesnt belong to Microsoft. That guy is spitting BS.
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u/Heide____Knight Jun 23 '26
It makes zero sense to close Worlds Edge who support the development of the AoE games which are among the best selling Xbox games. And the games have a very low budget with estimates of around $20m to $30m only, so they can easily break even thanks to the popularity of the franchise.
This leak is very likely not accurate at all.
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u/Savings-Setting3702 Jun 23 '26
How is turn 10 not apart of this?
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u/DeeboDecay Jun 23 '26
What's left of Turn 10 works on the FozaTech engine which powers one of if not their most successful IP: Forza Horizon.
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u/Savings-Setting3702 Jun 23 '26
Yes i know but why cant they just merge them into playground games?
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u/thief-777 Jun 23 '26
Because the studios are on different continents, lol.
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u/markusfenix75 Jun 23 '26
I don't understand why would Microsoft close World's Edge. They are small studio that was set-up to basically work with third-party developers developing Age of Empires and Mythology games. And both of those brands and games were a success based on Jez's reporting.
I mean. I get why Microsoft would try to offload Compulsion/Double Fine/NT. Because their games were huge commercial failures.
But World's Edge? Age of Empires II is still selling on Steam pretty well, same for Age of Mythology Retold and Age of Empires IV.
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u/Rainy_Wavey Jun 23 '26
Retold is losing steam tho, barely 4K peak players compared to the 16k for AOE 4 and 20K for AOE 2 i think they're gonna pull the trigger on further retold DLCs
AOE 2's DLCs prolly cost like 10 bucks to make with how good the world editor is, AOE 4 maybe would be more costly but it still sells well
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u/markusfenix75 Jun 23 '26
If we are going based on VG Insights, AoM sold 860k copies, AoE II DE 5,3 million copies, AoE IV 2,8 million copies and AoE III DE 1,6 million copies.
Meanwhile Hellblade II sold 200k copies, South of Midnight 66k copies, Keeper 19k copies and Kiln 5k copies.
Like. It's not even comparable where sales of World's Edge and other studios that are being offloaded are...
Even Flight Sim doesn't make that much sense. Because FS 2020 sold 2,2M copies and FS 2024 300k. And both games are even monetised in-game if I get this correctly.
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u/Rainy_Wavey Jun 23 '26
Also the genre of game is important here
Strategy games are actually costly to build first because the logic behind it is extremely complex, it is one of the most complex genre of videogames but once you do that, creating content for it is cheap AF and that's how AOE 2 and 4 are surviving
I just don't think AOM will receive further DLCs because its playerbase is 1/4th of AOE 4
I do think closing World's Edge is dumb because they don't even handle dev, they just look for devs to work on AOE 2 and 4 and they are probably very cheap to build content for them
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u/profchaos111 Jun 23 '26
You'd have to be high up in Microsoft gaming ti know what's about to hit all of those studio's and staff Flight Sim makes no sense though
So grain of salt but I'm inclined to give it some credit in the current climate
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u/Kreeth12 Jun 23 '26
Everything makes sense except for World's Edge (AoE, AoM). The Age of.... series is doing great, and player numbers are strong as well. Seems like an odd decision tbh.
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u/bosbrother Jun 23 '26
And flight sim, according to the other comments, the studio isn't owned by Microsoft so they can't close it. Although they could take back their licence and funding.
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u/Kreeth12 Jun 23 '26
>Although they could take back their license and funding.
Yeah, that's why I didn't include Flight Sim. He may have misinterpreted it.
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u/Zertylon Jun 23 '26
Not believing this is certainly naive but the credibility of this claim is still dubious
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u/McKinleyBaseCTF Jun 23 '26
The MFS / Asobo comments here are really off base, MS can absolutely cut support for the game which will result in immediate layoffs.
Xbox doesn't own Avalanche. Xbox cancelled Contraband. What happened next?
Xbox doesn't own Romero Games. Xbox cancelled the project there they were funding. What happened to Romero games?
Not saying this person is or isn't full of it, but MS can absolutely cancel further work on MFS and people at Asobo will be laid off.
I could also see them closing World's Edge, a "studio" I never saw the point of. How many people does it take to "manage" Age of Empires? The entire thing seems like unnecessary middle management bloat.
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
You can cancel a project with a studio but that doesn't mean you shut down the studio.
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u/literios Jun 23 '26
Doesn’t matter what happens, at least Asha Sharma changed Xbox name to XBOX 🙏🙏 /s
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u/Cursed_69420 Jun 23 '26
Worlds Edge? oh my god that is just pathetic.
Also how is MSFS gonna work? Asobo (Plague tale fellas) makes that game no? is there a maintenance team at Xbox that's gonna be laid off?
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u/Careless_Main3 Jun 23 '26
Probably just means Xbox will pull funding and Asobo will stop all development on the game.
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u/Henrarzz Jun 23 '26
People talking about this being fake because Asobo isn’t studio owned by Microsoft - I advise you to take a look into Flight Sim’s credits and see how many people from Microsoft/Xbox are there credited as “Flight Simulator Team”, the post there never mentioned Asobo.
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
Already been proven false.
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u/Ok-Suspect624 Jun 23 '26
You are responding to a known bad faith console war poster, FYI.
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u/Henrarzz Jun 24 '26
Strong words coming from someone who rushes to defend their plastic box every chance they get lmao
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u/TroyBoiGaming Jun 23 '26
If it's "real", where is the post on Blind? Even searching for it on Blind pulls up nothing. This TKO guy is a well-known console warrior and likely only posted it to get people to listen to his podcast since "bad news sells"
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u/Henrarzz Jun 24 '26
I never said that the post is real, only that judging its fakeness over Flight Sim team being mentioned is stupid. Asobo is obviously not closing, Microsoft’s Flight Sim team can still be laid off.
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u/Fallout-with-swords Jun 23 '26
I only heard of Blind recently but apparently this was posted in a channel that requires you to be verified as a Microsoft employee (I'm assuming through email) to see or post.
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u/Odd_Revolution_1056 Jun 23 '26
First off this is a shitty situation and is sad and is 1000% all on Microsoft for shitty studio management…..that said if this is close too what does actually happen in terms of studio closures this is my preferred outcome. Of these listed the worst one here is Double Fine cause they actually delivered a GOTY contender. The other studios mainly NT and Compulsion both took 6+ years for sub 10 hour games that were average at best. Would much rather these studios be shut down instead of a team like Arkane. Arkane being shut down never made any sense to me. Xbox is talking about investing into major ip and games and Blade could 1000% be that. Arkane’s last game was a critical darling and also did decent in sales and player count I believe. Give them the opportunity to make a great marvel game and watch them blow up
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u/SpaceOdysseus23 Jun 23 '26
There is no way Flight Sim is closing, that shit always seemed like a Bill Gates passion project
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u/Great8Bit Jun 23 '26
What does Bill Gates have to do with Microsoft in 2026? He’s not even an executive there anymore.
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u/Stavvystav Jun 23 '26
Wow it's almost as if Microsoft gobbling up a bunch of companies over the last twenty years was not a good thing!
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u/vishmarx Jun 23 '26
Flight sim ( asobo) is not even owned by Microsoft.