Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has weighed in on yesterday's Xbox restructuring, and unsurprisingly, he didn't sit on the fence. Responding to an article that criticized Microsoft's decision to move Halo (and Rare and World's Edge) under Activision, Sweeney wrote on X:
Putting the best performing studios in charge of the projects with the most potential makes sense, and gives those projects the best chance of success.
It's a blunt take on a day when Xbox eliminated 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios and its management layer. The next mainline Halo will now be built by a new, purpose-built team at Activision, separate from Call of Duty, while Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) is reduced to a small team supporting existing games and the community. World's Edge was similarly halved, and its next project got canceled.
Still, uncomfortable as the timing is, Sweeney's logic is hard to dispute on track record alone. Activision has spent two decades turning Call of Duty into the most reliable blockbuster machine in the industry, topping US sales charts almost every year for well over a decade. It has its misfires, Vanguard and Modern Warfare III's campaign among them...