Xbox cuts 268 roles, moves Halo to Activision in studio shake-up
Xbox will cut 268 roles and shift several studios to new owners inside Microsoft, in changes announced on 22 September 2026.
Chief operating officer Matt Booty confirmed the number in a company message. The roles will go across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, meaning teams owned by Xbox, and Xbox Game Studios management and central functions, Video Games Chronicle. Booty said Xbox is now roughly three-quarters of the way through its previously announced restructuring.
Halo sits at the centre of the plan. Activision will take control of the franchise with a new, purpose-built Halo team. That team will sit apart from Call of Duty development. Halo Studios will not close entirely. It will remain as a small team to support the Halo community and games already in the market.
Two more studios will also move to Activision. They are World's Edge, the team behind Age of Empires, and Rare, the developer of Sea of Thieves, a live-service game sold and updated in seasons after launch.
Obsidian Entertainment will be rolled into Bethesda, the publisher behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. It will continue work on current projects, including Grounded and a new Fallout game. Xbox also plans to merge Turn 10 Studios and Playground, its two racing studios. It has proposed the closure of Ninja Theory after a deal to secure its future could not be arranged.
The September announcement follows a wider reset outlined in July. Xbox said at the time that four studios would leave Xbox for new management, in a post titled "Resetting XBOX" published on 6 July 2026 on Xbox Wire. That group was reported as Double Fine, Compulsion, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs, Game Developer. Xbox has since published a follow-up post titled "Continuing Our Reset". The new position on Ninja Theory is a proposed closure rather than a transfer.
Job cuts were part of the July plan. The Xbox business initially cut 1,600 jobs, with a further 1,600 planned by the end of Microsoft's business year. The wider Microsoft group said it would cut 4,800 jobs, or about 2.1% of its global workforce, Reuters.
For fans, this means familiar games will report to different parts of the organisation, but Xbox says current projects continue. No dates were given for the mergers or transfers. The company described the restructuring as still in progress, with about a quarter still to go.
