In the latest round of restructuring at Xbox it was revealed 268 employees would be laid off. This includes Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and Xbox Game Studios management and central functions layer.
World’s Edge, which was put under Activision as part of the changes, has reportedly seen nearly half of the studio let go, according to Creative Director Adam Isgreen.
“FYI World’s Edge was not spared completely – just under half the studio was let go – myself included,” he said on ResetEra. “Been fun, y’all!”
Read a LinkedIn post from Isgreen below:
Well, that’s that.
I never thought that I’d work at Microsoft, let alone spend a significant amount of my career here – 16 years! – especially in a creative-first role.
There’s so much to be proud of; everything from Windows Phone (the best phone UI EVER) to XBLA and a host of amazing titles – Ori, Minecraft, Trials HD, State of Decay, ITSP, World of Tanks, and many, many more – to publishing with Recore, KI, Powerstar Golf, Phantom Dust, Crackdown, Fable, Age DE, and others, and finally, lastly, with the Age of Empires franchise and all the great games and expansions we released throughout the years. I didn’t think I’d be working on RTS games again years after their first “heyday”, but am I ever proud of what our studio team and partners were able to do with the series and juice the genre’s return. I think the fans would agree (mostly!) that we delivered the goods for all of ’em.
I must also mention all the MS platform initiatives, marketing and feature visions, console rollouts, prototype devices, and neat tech I got to play with and have input in shaping the release of across the years. It was so fun working with those talented teams on such a diverse range of hardware and software. I still am sad that some of those ideas never reached consumers.
MS facilitated me visiting places I would not have likely visited and gave me the opportunity to interact with amazing developers from all around the world. For that, I’m very grateful. And to those devs, from all the internal teams in Xbox (Coalition; Halo; Turn 10; Playground; Minecraft; Bethesda; Blizzard; Activision; platform; hardware; all the LIS) to partners Forgotten Empires, Relic, Timi, Iron Galaxy, Tantalus, Armature, Platinum, Gunfire, Double Helix, Asobo, Moon, Access, and many, many more, thank you for years of stimulating partnerships. Ya’ll all had your own unique spin on game creation and it was always fun melding minds and figuring out the common ground we had to make great games. I loved what we were able to do together.
I am of course disappointed that this is the way the time with World’s Edge and Age ends for myself and many of my talented teammates that were also impacted – we had some great plans for what’s next – and I hope the team that remains can rise to the occasion down the line.
Thanks to all the fans that expressed their passion to me along the way through the years, through in-person events, forums, and all manners of social media. And thanks to everyone at MS and beyond that I interacted with across the years. Y’all have all had impact on me, for sure, and there’s way too many individuals to list here.
What’s next? No idea. Maybe games? Maybe not? Pinball machines? Always loved the combination of design + art + engineering they represent.
Something creative, whatever it may be. Happy to chat possibilities. Or just chat. It’s all good.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
Full Article – https://www.vgchartz.com/article/469158/nearly-half-of-age-of-empires-dev-worlds-edge-laid-off/
