While several Xbox studios regained independence or found new owners yesterday, Arkane's staff must negotiate their own future

Yesterday, Xbox announced that they were spinning off five major studios in the course of the latest round of "historic" restructuring, with 1600 jobs instantly chopped and 1600 more layoffs to follow over the next financial year. It's the latest in a string of failures on the part of Xbox leadership, who have repeatedly butchered the division after an evidently overambitious acquisition spree that dates back to the 2010s. It has, at least, not yet resulted in any outright studio closures.

Double Fine and Compulsion are going indie again with a little funding from Microsoft, keeping ownership of their games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have been sold to unnamed new owners. And then there's Dishonored and Marvel's Blade developers Arkane, whose fate is still being negotiated.

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Xbox's layoffs come with a push to focus on series like Fallout, so naturally New Vegas devs Obsidian have reportedly lost around a quarter of their staff

Xbox laid off around 1600 people yesterday, July 6th, as mass cuts accompanied by the decision to part ways with five studios were set in stone. This substantial upheaval's also had plenty of consequences for the studios staying under the Microsoft banner, including a more concerted push to get remaining staff working on Xbox's most lucrative series. Fallout, for example. That hasn't stopped the reportedly cuts including around a quarter of the staff at noted Fallout spin-off developers Obsidian.

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Xbox layoffs mean that Elder Scrolls Online's roadmap is "shifting" just two days before Season One's release... the plan put in place for the MMO after the last round of cuts

Yesterday brought the news that Microsoft were cutting 1600 staff, spinning out four studios, and finding a further 1600 jobs to cut in the year to come. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said in an email to staff that she was "making reductions" and "shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects".Today, we're starting to learn what those cuts mean for the teams that Xbox retained, and the projects they were working on. The most public and immediate of these is Elder Scrolls Online.

In January, Zenimax Online Studios, the makers of Elder Scrolls Online, announced they would be ditching yearly expansions and moving the MMO to a seasonal release model. The team were just two days ahead of releasing Season One when Xbox hit them with layoffs so severe the release roadmap needs to be rebuilt.

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Stop judging games by their sales figures, says Tekken's Katsuhiro Harada: “That’s exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s never actually developed games"

I don't think anybody reading these hallowed pages really judges games by their sales figures, but it's nice to hear that perspective affirmed by no less a Legendary Fightguy than Katsuhiro Harada, the former face of Tekken. Out of the blue, Harada has posted some very nice words about Dark Souls kingpin and FromSoftware president Hidetaki Miyazaki, noting that Miyazaki came late to game development and worked on a bunch of less praised or successful games, before landing it big with Souls.

Harada (who is currently CEO of SNK VS Studio) makes the obvious but eminently repeatable argument that these older, less celebrated projects paved the way for the Souls series. He accuses people who think disparagingly of them of being unable to "appreciate the journey or the growth of the developers themselves". It's not clear who these statements are aimed at, exactly, but Harada does add that he's "NOT talking about the fan community". The whole thing sounds like a rebuke to publisher moneymen who only think as far as the next earnings call.

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This week in PC games: Stardew Valley plus vampires, a lavish gamebook RPG, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, finally

Happy this week, all! Also: huge apologies to the World Cup organisers and teams for any matchside cosmic sabotage brought on by our struggle to feed the Maw. Truth be told, Mexico should have had last night's game in the bag, if only I'd topped up the Maw's feeding trough on Friday with another handful of Slay the Spire 2 stories. In its hunger, the creature broke containment, and fell upon the sacred realm of association football, kindling all manner of pandemonium.

You may have noticed that half of Mexico's goal shots vanished in flight, for example, leaving behind a turquoise haze and the aroma of burning locusts. You may have noticed that Jude Bellingham had six more legs than is customary, for a champions league player. Or perhaps you didn't notice any of that because you were too busy thinking about this week's forthcoming PC game releases. Here are a few I've got my eye on.

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"Smuggle chainsaws onto the pitch": What Blood Bowl's new publisher thinks the World Cup can learn from Warhammer

Last week brought the news that strategy game publisher Slitherine have penned a deal with Cyanide Studios to continue developing Blood Bowl 3 (which will soon become Warhammer Blood Bowl. The tabletop-inflected sport is broadly similar to American football, though there are opportunities for even greater violence on the pitch.

As the Americans are currently one of the nations hosting the World Cup, and using that opportunity to clutter it up with things like hydration breaks and half-time shows, I thought it best to ask Slitherine what the yanks could lift from Blood Bowl while they're at it.

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The Sunday Papers

You know what, reader? Sundays are for whatever you goddamn feel like. Go swimming. Get lost in the woods. Take a kintsugi pottery class. Fix a broken appliance. Eat more than one hot dog. Learn Welsh. Smash your kintsugi pottery and take another class to repair it. Rearrange towels. Borrow some sugar. Don’t give it back.

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