Amidst Xbox Layoffs and Restructuring, ZeniMax’s Pivot to Major Franchises Does Not Spell the "Death Sentence" for Doom, Quake, or Wolfenstein
Meanwhile, the Minecraft development team at Mojang will now report directly to Asha Sharma.
Xbox has finally officially announced the scale of its massive layoffs and studio lineup restructuring. The uncertainty that has loomed for the past few weeks has now settled: Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, and Arkane will face new paths outside the Xbox ecosystem. This round of cuts and reorganization also affects several studios remaining under Microsoft, with their future operational models set to be streamlined.
Prior to July 6, reports indicated that accelerating the production of new entries for the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises would be a key objective for Asha Sharma as she recalibrates Xbox’s direction. The core strategy is to bet more resources on established, large-scale IPs. In an email sent today, Sharma mentioned that beyond the studios exiting the system, Xbox would also be downsizing in other departments and, in some cases, reallocating investments toward higher-priority projects. She emphasized that these changes vary by business line, affecting sectors including Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios, but clarified that no publicly announced first-party games or projects would be canceled due to this restructuring.
According to Bloomberg, ZeniMax is indeed undergoing a "major transformation" and will shift its focus further toward flagship series like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. However, this does not mean these are the only two lines remaining. Revitalized classic franchises such as Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein will continue to move forward. At the same time, Jason Schreier reported that id Software would lose a "significant number" of employees due to today's layoffs, suggesting that even if the series remain, the team size and organizational structure have been noticeably compressed.
On another front, Sharma announced that the Minecraft development team, Mojang, will now report directly to her. This is clearly part of her effort to extract as much value as possible from Minecraft and the mobile giant Candy Crush, developed by King. She believes these two products are no longer just individual games but are increasingly functioning as platforms, and they represent some of the largest monthly active user bases within the Xbox ecosystem.
As reported by Game File, Sharma even believes that Minecraft has been "severely undervalued" and under-resourced over the past six years, resulting in it gradually losing ground in the competition against the block-style rival Roblox. In contrast, Roblox has consistently poured money into expanding its block universe, while Minecraft was allegedly being used to fund other gaming businesses under the Xbox umbrella. In other words, the more likely change ahead is that more resources will flow back into Mojang's sandbox ecosystem rather than being siphoned off elsewhere.
Although today's news is generally grim, one thing is certain: Xbox’s decision to bet more resources on Fallout and The Elder Scrolls does not mean that all projects within ZeniMax that fall outside this tier will be discarded. As Edwin wrote in his report tracking the layoffs and studio splits, we hope that everyone affected by this round of cuts finds a smooth path forward.
