Told you. Obsidian is becoming fallout studio + maybe grounded
Bethesda will focus on The Elderscrolls Obsidian will focus on Fallout
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Not a fan of how this one treats game pass users as playing the game for ‘free’ and then acts like DOOM was a ‘counter’ to The Last of Us and God of War. It was on PS5 and is an entirely different type of game.
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i still can’t get around how DOOM TDA wasn’t as big as should have been
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Feels like Xbox in general has been fumbling here. If one game undersells there’s a lot of reasons you could look at as to why it failed. But Xbox has had a few too many titles failing to hit expectations and maybe they are the common factor. Whether it be a failure in advertising, pricing or whatever else.
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Yes. I feel like when the games review well critically and win awards and are enjoyed by those who do play them, but constantly “under perform” then there’s at least some fault with the publisher. Maybe it’s the business model and Game Pass just died silently in the night. Gamers refused it. Xbox gamers constantly attack the marketing. A lot of the pricing for Xbox AAA games have been bad. Avowed was overpriced at $70 and not really AAA, the Outer Worlds never fully recovered from being announced at $80, and Doom shouldn’t have been nearly that much in Europe.
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Very expensive and barely any marketing/hype.
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People wanted more Doom Eternal, which did much bigger numbers than TDA, on Steam it had like 3 times more players than TDA at launch, could’ve been due to Covid lockdowns though, since TDA looks like it was closer to Doom 2016’s numbers, anyway, Eternal was still pretty huge and going by community reactions it looks like people wanted more of that, I loved TDA but can’t say I also didn’t want more Eternal.
You don’t mess with ID though, easily one of the most talented studios in the industry now gutted, f them for that, everything else I can understand but not touching this one, ugh f this effin corrupt corporation.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/Lcxl8gZYSt
More rumors on the layoffs, Zenimax Online Studios suffered a 213 people layoff. The last reported number of devs by Schreier in 2025 was 300 after the first layoffs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/tfqIjyz7gU
More rumors on the ID layoff numbers now outs it at 136 of 185 devs being let go.
If these numbers are true they may as well close the studios because those numbers won’t allow for more than support work.
Edit: This is also the current 1600 layoffs the rest may as well mean the people left won’t be part of of Xbox by the end of the year.
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Yeah that announcement of “oh yeah we’re getting rid of another 1,600 this year” makes all of it even worse.
The remaining devs are all going to be looking over their shoulders and if they get another offer elsewhere will go - insecurity is not a good employment tactic nor good for productivity.
It also means however huge these layoffs have been, it’ll be the same again - meaning teams working on Asha’s priorities will have to be hit again, which will severely impact delivery, team cohesion and just waste time.
The huge cuts and the huge cuts coming go completely counter to the new strategy of getting bigger games out faster - and shows for all the talk of “Sharma has Nadella’s backing” she was still forced to do huge layoffs even worse than the rest of the company
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That early talk of the “30% margin being gone” and “Nadella gave Sharma a blank check” (though that second one was like immediately proven false) seems downright crazy now.
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If true these are like ghost studios now barely keeping the lights on. And ZOS runs ESO as a big live service for one of those major franchises Sharma spoke about supporting. Yikes. Also if true I’m worried about Id tech. Like with 343, how can they run a propietary engine if the experienced devs are all or mostly gone? When they do rehire there’s going to be a big learning curve for new devs if they stick to the propertiary engine.
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It’s all Microsoft do - short term thinking, then demand the same of Xbox when gaming needs long term thinking given the time taken to develop big games and new consoles.
Hence the constant cycles of layoffs that lead to loss of knowledge - leaders worth their salt know the value of keeping experienced teams together, which is why my opinion of Nadella is as low as it can be.
He’s a coward, forever doing more and more layoffs to please the shareholders while praying his AI bet pays off - the CEOs of old would’ve told the shareholders breaking up valuable teams is stupid and to shut up.
But nowadays American CEOs are just cowards - I’ve said it before, I knew late stage capitalism would suck, I just never realised it’d be so weak and pathetic
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I mean that’s what greed is. Materialistic need driven by fear I think more than anything because if any of these people felt safe, satisfied, and secure in life (which they should given all that they had) then they wouldn’t be bending over backwards so readily just to grow more and more and more. Like why even? Are they that afraid of the share price dropping? Are they that far behind in the AI race? What is driving one of the biggest companies in the world with surging stock market valuation to play chicken and cut off limbs and hide in their shell like this? You have to think something bad and big is on the horizon for gaming.
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One gets some of the cuts backs & studio selling to make XBOX more productive & nimble
I can’t for the life of me defend or understand the brutal cuts to id software. They’re not only one of the best studios going, but they’re also productive & have an awesome tech pipeline that XBOX should be using to power more of its games rather than Unreal on the likes of Halo
This will also create a massive backlash too, id software is a respected studio that even non PC fans looked up to & admired
I get that with Activsion XBOX has massive amounts of FPS development talent along with Halo studios, but the id cuts are too brutal IMO
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There’s another rumor about id Tech Engine being important for the future. In the reddit post people are talking about the id team in Germany that focuses on engine tech and Machine Games with their Motor Engine.
Both being in Europe would mean they’re cheaper to run (have to wonder how much more expensive Arkane is), and how this could be the way for id Tech to continue being important.
But they still have 1600 people still waiting on layoffs, within the rest of the year. Which could align with the talk of needing 6 months to fire people in Germany.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/meOeTGxUzW
My guess is that they will do what they did with Halo CEmake and just have a contract studio do most of the work.
Edit: although that probably won’t work the same as id Tech isn’t as documented and freely available as Unreal Engine.
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Should be more accessible than Halo engine for example but not anywhere near the ubiquity of Unreal
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Likely something most people don’t know how to use though, or have very little experience using id Tech. Epic really cornered the market in becoming the default for most devs
More like very expensive and shitty marketing, id trying so hard to distance themselves from Eternal when that game was so successful will always be so weird to me…and the extreme focus on those goddamn accessibility options, dude come on. Just sell the game for what it is and not for what isn’t.
Still having said that it IS surprising to me how much id has been affected by the layoffs but as Jesse already said if your game doesn’t sell well you are in the chopping block, I hope Asha will understand that this is not how a videogame platform holder should operate especially with such high quality studios as id…