Following yesterday’snews of a bloodbath happening at Microsoftwhere approximately 9,000 jobs were laid off, more details about the inner workings of Xbox’s first-party studios have come to light, and they don’t paint a pretty picture.
This time,developers from Halo Studios, formerly known as 343 Industries, spoke out about the layoffs, and confirmed the studio was affected.
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What’s even more worrying about the revelations by the source is how Microsoft is seemingly pushing for what we all feared when it comes to AI (Artificial Intelligence) use in video game development.
Halo Studios Devs Not Happy About The Quality Of Their Project
A developer close to the situation who wishes to remain anonymous has spoken toEngadget, and confirmed that at least five employees from Halo Studios were affected, which is a small number given the studio has an estimated 200 to 300 employees.
While the next Halo game after Halo Infinite hasn’t been revealed yet, the source paints a grim picture of the current project. “I don’t think anybody is really happy about the quality of the product right now,” the source shared.“There’s been a lot of tension and pep talks trying to rally folks to ship,“they added.
Unless plans go awry, Halo Studios plans to reveal what they’ve been working on at this year’s Halo World Championship event in October.
According to the unnamed developer, since 203, there’s been a shift in working with contracted studios in order to pitch in for a single gam to speed up development, and this is what we’re seeing with games likeCall of Duty, and evenBattlefield, which has four studios working together to complete one product.
The dev shared, “Xbox in general feels years behind the curve in game development, and it leads to a lot of wasted time and effort.” This has seemingly translated to canceled projects, studio closures, and, of course, layoffs.
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Perhaps the most distressing part of the insider source the developer has shared is howMicrosoft is said to be “trying their damndest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents.”
WheneverAI and game development are brought up, AI replacing jobs is one of the main reasons why gamers and developers aren’t a fan of it, which is perfectly understandable. Did Microsoft cut jobs to save money and have AI do the work of the laid-off people? We can’t say for sure, but an educated guess would point to that as one of the main causes.
While this doesn’t bode well for the future of the Halo franchise, the game is still in development, which is something since yesterday’s layoff explosion revealedmultiple games were canceledas part of it.
Here’s to hoping that when we do get to see the new Halo game, it won’t be AI-driven, since I don’t see that being accepted warmly by gamers.
