Xbox layoffs have likely killed another Perfect Dark reboot from the hollowed-out id Software, as well as a John Wick-style gun fu game
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It's not even clear what kind of games the newly-carved up id Software can make.
The full scale of Xbox's rash of layoffs is still to be properly tallied up—partially because CEO Asha Sharma is yet to announce a further 1,600 axed roles. One particularly harsh casualty is id Software, which has taken around 136 job losses on the chin. A move that one employee described this week as reducing it to the size of a "support studio".
We're just now learning about the projects that the developer, which had just released a large DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages, was cooking—courtesy of Gamesbeat. The report states that id Software was looking to pitch a Perfect Dark reboot:
"The team was also considering doing a game based on Perfect Dark, the franchise that hasn’t had a new addition since Perfect Dark Zero in 2005 on the Xbox 360 game console … Concept art was in the works."
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And, listen—it's not confirmed this pitch hasn't been picked up, or even that it's been impacted the layoffs. But I think we can all take a deeply educated guess that it's unlikely id Software is going to have the resources to make it. It's a studio whose majority of staff has been shown the door, forced off its homegrown game engine and forced to work in Unreal. Chances of it happening are microscopically slim.
Which wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has killed a Perfect Dark reboot in the past five years. Back in 2025, a staggering 9,000 layoffs saw developer The Initiative closed, and their version of the game—which had an impressive gameplay demo in 2024—tossed into Microsoft's growing landfill of shuttered projects.
Another project from the hollowed-out studio that likely won't see the light of day is a John Wick-inspired game dubbed "Fury", says the Gamesbeat report:
"It had elements of sci-fi, noir, and Louisiana and Chicago gangsters. It had a modern, cyberpunk-like feel. It had a concept called Gun Fu, which combined gunplay with martial arts. The game was supposed to feel a lot like a John Wick movie, but it was not formally greenlit for production."
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Sounds awesome, and I figure if anyone could've pulled it off, it would've been id Software, progenitors of Doom—shooter experts in their own right. Will it ever see the light of day? Well, Microsoft would have to restore an estimated 3/4ths of its staff, first. I legitimately can't think of a game that a studio who has lost that much talent could even make. When your co-founder's mourning their own former studio, you're probably in trouble.
