Age of Empires Studio’s Next Game Canceled as Part of Xbox Layoffs

According to former employees, Xbox laid off half of studio World's Edge

Xbox's ongoing layoffs are so sweeping that we’re still piecing together the full picture. In early July, the company announced it would immediately cut 1,600 employees, with more layoffs in the next fiscal year. It also divested from several of its most acclaimed studios, including Double Fine and Ninja Theory. Many of the studios that survived faced significant cuts, with Doom developer id Software losing around half its employees.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced another wave of layoffs affecting 268 employees, as well as a major restructuring that would shift the Halo series to Activision and give Bethesda Softworks control of Obsidian Entertainment. As part of this reorganization, Activision also inherited World’s Edge, which Microsoft created in 2019 to oversee the Age of Empires series.

How was World’s Edge affected by the layoffs?

Unfortunately, World’s Edge was hit hard by the latest job cuts. According to a post by former creative director Adam Isgreen on ResetEra, Xbox let go of just under half the studio, including Isgreen. On top of this, software engineer Andrew Martz wrote on LinkedIn that, as part of the reorganization, Microsoft canceled its next project. Given that World’s Edge was created to oversee the Age of Empires series, the canceled title was probably a new game in the franchise (or perhaps a spinoff like Age of Mythology). In Martz’s case, he was laid off just seven days after receiving a promotion. “I guess it is time to pick up the pieces one more time,” he wrote in the post announcing the news.

Xbox Game Studios established World’s Edge in 2019 to manage the Age of Empires series, working with several other development studios like Relic Entertainment, Forgotten Empires, and Tantalus Media on remakes and sequels. World's Edge contributed to the Definitive Editions of the first three Age of Empires games, a remastered version of Age of Mythology, and the all-new Age of Empires 4, which wasreleased in 2021. With World’s Edge’s headcount reduced and its next game canceled, the future of the Age of Empires series looks rather grim.

Xbox leadership has indicated it will prioritize a franchise-driven approach going forward, with most teams focusing on existing series over new IP. Since World’s Edge was already doing this with Age of Empires and still took significant cuts, it looks like Microsoft is doubling down on a small pool of massive series like Halo and Fallout.