<\/p>\n
As was feared after rumors of massive layoffs at Xbox started circulating shortly after this year\u2019s Xbox Showcase, the axe has finally fallen at Team Green. While it is the latest in a series of devastating impact waves that have been hitting Xbox ever since its record $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King became official, it is at least a relief to know that the four studios whose fates seemed in doubt \u2013 Double Fine, Compulsion, Undead Labs, and Ninja Theory \u2013 will all live to fight another day as either independent studios or under new corporate ownership (a fifth, Arkane, remains in flux as Microsoft must navigate French labor laws). <\/p>\n
But business will clearly be handled differently at Xbox moving forward. New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is reportedly seeking to speed up development on Xbox\u2019s tentpole franchises: Halo, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. I imagine that Forza Horizon, Fable, and Gears of War are also on that list, but obviously those three are all shipping later this year or, in Forza\u2019s case, just shipped in May. <\/p>\n
In her memo announcing the \u201creset\u201d at Xbox, Sharma plainly said, \u201cWe have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio.\u201d Meanwhile, Bethesda boss Jill Braff told her teams that \u201cto best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what’s next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises and determining the content roadmap that best serves our players and Bethesda as a whole.\u201d <\/p>\n
But how might all of that actually look in practice? What would it take for Xbox to divert its resources into its biggest franchises, best utilizing the studios it\u2019s keeping alive? As someone who\u2019s been covering Xbox for almost all of its existence, I\u2019ve got some ideas. I reserve the right to be wrong, certainly, but here\u2019s what I\u2019d imagine is a realistic blueprint for what the next chapter of Xbox development might look like.<\/p>\n
Halo has been a mess since long before this \u201creset\u201d was even considered. Halo 5\u2019s lackluster single-player campaign couldn\u2019t live up to its brilliant marketing campaign, Halo Infinite famously missed the Series X\u2019s launch and needed to be pulled from the depths of Development Hell by OG Halo veteran Joseph Staten \u2013 and then he didn\u2019t stick around \u2013 and more recently, the studio changed leadership and its technology base, chucking its proprietary Slipspace game engine in the dumpster for Unreal Engine 5. The newly rechristened Halo Studios is about to ship Halo: Campaign Evolved, the studio\u2019s first UE5 experiment that marks both its 25th anniversary and its first \u2013 and quite possibly last \u2013 appearance on a PlayStation console. And while it\u2019s packing a trio of new prequel missions, it\u2019s missing multiplayer entirely, which probably isn\u2019t going to give it much staying power. <\/p>\n
So as Halo Studios effectively reboots itself in terms of leadership and tech, how on Earth can Xbox fast-track a Halo game? The answer perhaps lies outside<\/em> of Halo Studios, in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas: id Software. Or at least, so I thought until Xbox had other ideas. id was unfortunately affected quite heavily by the layoffs, with reportedly more than half the studio being given their walking papers. Which, I\u2019ll be honest, I could write a whole separate rant about, because it is indefensibly studpid. Setting aside id\u2019s legacy, all it\u2019s actually done over the past decade is ship three top-shelf first-person shooters, reviving the iconic Doom IP in the process, and it shipped them all on relatively tight schedules. <\/p>\n I\u2019d give Halo to the brilliant MachineGames and let them reboot it entirely, just as they did for Wolfenstein. \u201c<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So if id is no longer in a position to develop something as big as a Halo game, I\u2019d give Halo to the equally brilliant MachineGames and let them reboot it entirely, just as they did for Wolfenstein. Let\u2019s be honest: Halo\u2019s story has gotten convoluted. Infinite ended on a cliffhanger. Master Chief voice actor Steve Downes is 76 years old. By the time the next Halo is ready to roll, he\u2019ll likely be pushing 80. It now seems like the only sensible course of action is to just acknowledge the awesome run that Halo\u2019s longrunning canon had and reboot the damn thing. It\u2019s time.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the team at MachineGames has proven that it can develop top-shelf action games on a reasonable schedule. The studio\u2019s brilliant reboot of Wolfenstein dropped in 2014, and the sequel hit just three years later. The standalone expansion called Youngblood released in 2019, and then five years later we got one of the best games of this entire generation: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. How long do you think it\u2019s going to take Halo Studios to get its act together and get the next major Halo game out the door? After we waited six years between Halo 5 and Halo Infinite and it\u2019s already <\/em>been five years since Infinite, I\u2019d bet a huge sum of money on MachineGames being able to get a major Halo game done before Halo Studios can.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Of course, Halo can\u2019t be taken away from Halo Studios, and nor would I ever suggest that. Any kind of shakeup should play to the strengths of the studio, and while MachineGames\u2019s work on modern Wolfenstein has proven its single-player strengths, multiplayer has never been its focus. That can never be the case for Master Chief, and so Halo Studios could lead on the reboot\u2019s multiplayer. Halo 5 and Infinite (its live-service support woes aside) proved that the studio is capable of making an awesome Halo multiplayer game. <\/p>\n But what about the years and games beyond that reboot? The answer may lie in yet another unusual place: Games Workshop. The British tabletop company handles Warhammer 40K video games through a myriad of partnerships with talented external developers, allowing for many great games across a number of different genres that arrive on a regular basis: whether it\u2019s Dawn of War, Boltgun, Space Marine, or any number of other games in other genres, there is seemingly always another promising and unique Warhammer experience right around the corner. Same with Disney and Star Wars \u2013 Disney is now working with Saber on a KOTOR remake, former KOTOR director Casey Hudson and his team on a KOTOR spiritual successor (Fate of the Old Republic), Quantic Dream on a narrative adventure (Star Wars Eclipse), a group of ex-XCOM developers on a tactics game (Zero Company), a team of ex-Burnout developers on an arcade racing game (Galactic Racer), and Amy Hennig on an untitled third-person Star Wars action-adventure. That\u2019s <\/em>the kind of future Halo could have. It\u2019s a universe so rich with deep lore and characters that it\u2019s criminal we\u2019ve had exactly zero new and original Halo games in the last five years and counting. Halo should be on our hard drives constantly. Instead, it\u2019s an afterthought when you think about big gaming franchises today.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that The Elder Scrolls and Fallout are both massive franchises with the potential to sell millions, but it’s been more than a decade since either series saw a mainline, single-player release. Todd Howard, the game director on both Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, is in full production on The Elder Scrolls 6 now, and he\u2019s told me directly that he intends to direct Fallout 5 himself. The problem with that, given that Bethesda Game Studios has historically only been in full production on one game at a time, is that it means Fallout 5 probably won’t ship until the mid-2030\u2019s. <\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that something needs to be done about that, and Xbox already has the necessary talent, resources and template to do so in-house. Take a look at Call of Duty, which has long been able to create annual offerings by having multiple studios, spearheaded by Infinity Ward and Treyarch, all working on different games at the same time on three-ish year development cycles. A similar \u201cdevelopment circle\u201d of RPG studios could be created for Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. The members of that circle? Bethesda Game Studios, of course, along with decorated RPG developers Obsidian Entertainment (who\u2019ve done this dance before when making the still-beloved Fallout: New Vegas) and inXile Entertainment (whose founder, Brian Fargo, helmed Fallout\u2019s precursor, Wasteland, and<\/em> produced the original two Fallout games).<\/p>\n The result could be a big new Fallout or Elder Scrolls game releasing every other year.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Three-year development cycles are, of course, unrealistic for RPGs the size of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, but six-year cycles seem more achievable. And if Bethesda switches to Unreal Engine, which Obsidian and inXile are both currently using, or Obsidian and inXile switch to Bethesda\u2019s Creation Engine, it would mean that all teams would be working off of a shared \u2013 and constantly evolving \u2013 tech pipeline. Regardless of where the tech lands, the result could be a big new Fallout or Elder Scrolls game releasing every other year, which sure beats the 11 years (and counting) it\u2019s been since Fallout 4 and the 15 years (and counting) it\u2019s been since Skyrim. Perhaps this would mean that Obsidian\u2019s own Pillars of Eternity universe, the home of Avowed, would be shelved so that the whole team \u2013 particularly since it, too, suffered layoffs during Xbox\u2019s \u201creset\u201d \u2013 could come together to power through a hypothetical Fallout: New Vegas 2, but I suspect that would be a sacrifice Xbox would be willing to make. <\/p>\n And in fact, it seems Xbox might be doing exactly this \u2013 or at least, the first step of it. Bloomberg reports that Obsidian\u2019s Avowed 2 has been canceled and that Fallout: New Vegas game director Josh Sawyer will set his own unannounced project aside to focus on a new Fallout game.<\/p>\n Xbox\u2019s future is more uncertain than ever, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any doubt about that. If Microsoft moves ahead with Project Helix, it\u2019s zagging while Sony zigs, aiming more at the Steam Machine and the growing PC game market than the traditional console space it\u2019s been losing ground in for the past two generations. One thing seems certain, though: new IPs and smaller projects are going to be fewer and farther between for the foreseeable future. And that\u2019s not ideal if you ask me. But if we do get lots more Halo in many different shapes and sizes, and we get Fallout and Elder Scrolls games more than once each in our adult lifetimes, that would be a sliver of good news, at least. Let\u2019s see where Xbox goes from here.<\/p>\n Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, <\/em>Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, <\/em>IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at <\/em>@DMC_Ryan<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nMore Fallout, More Elder Scrolls<\/h3>\n