Halo Studios cinematic director Josh Daniels has confirmed that he was promoted and laid off inside the identical week amid information that Activision has now taken over improvement of the subsequent Halo sport.
Xbox’s large restructuring continues this week, with Chief Content material Officer Matt Booty saying 268 layoffs “throughout Halo Studios, different first-party studios, and the XGS administration and central capabilities layer.”
One in every of the workers impacted by these layoffs was Josh Daniels, the now-former cinematic director of Halo Studios. He confirmed the information in a submit on LinkedIn, the place he revealed that he’d simply gotten promoted that very same week in a brutal flip of occasions.
“Promoted and laid off in the identical week is fairly wild. I am one in all the many hit by the Halo Studios layoffs,” he wrote. “I will be taking some offline time at this time, however very a lot would love to speak to anybody on the lookout for Cinematic Route or Manufacturing roles. Be happy to get in contact if something seems to be like I is likely to be a match.”
Daniels had been concerned with Xbox for simply over a decade, having beforehand lent his abilities to the Forza Motorsport video games. He was anointed cinematic director at Halo Studios in 2024 and labored on Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced, a title that was met with a lukewarm reception from gamers upon its launch earlier this 12 months.
A cinematic director for a online game oversees a title’s inventive imaginative and prescient, narrative route, and in-game cutscenes, amongst many different obligations. The removing of such an integral position means that the subsequent Halo sport is taking a drastically completely different strategy than its predecessors, although this wouldn’t be out of left subject; one in all the extra surprising outcomes of Xbox’s shakeup was the information that Activision is now taking the helm of the Halo franchise.
Whereas Halo Studios nonetheless exists and will “proceed supporting the Halo group and video games in-market,” Activision is now main the cost on the sequence’ subsequent sport. The minds behind Name of Obligation making a Halo sport is actually one thing that wasn’t on anybody’s bingo card, and whereas opinions are largely combined, many followers are cautiously optimistic and open for something to get the franchise out of its present state.
For now, we’ll have to attend and see what the future holds for Halo. In the meantime, different studios impacted by Xbox’s large restructuring embrace Undead Labs, who revealed at this time that its subsequent sport, State of Decay 3, continues to be in energetic improvement and is slated for a closed beta later this 12 months, with a launch date set for 2027.