Halo Manager Fired One Day After Promotion

Xbox’s new wave of layoffs this week affected 268 employees, and noteworthy personal stories have begun to emerge following the cuts. One of them belongs to Josh Daniels, who has worked in Microsoft’s gaming teams for about 11 years. Daniels received a promotion to cinematic director on Monday, but announced that he lost his job just one day later, on Tuesday, as part of the layoffs.

Halo Studios Executive’s Promotion Lasted Only One Day

In a social media post, Daniels said that being both promoted and laid off in the same week was quite strange. Confirming that he was also one of the employees affected by the layoffs at Halo Studios, the executive stated that he would be offline for a while but was open to new cinematic directing or production opportunities.

Josh Daniels had been working at Halo Studios since 2024. His Microsoft career, however, goes back much further. From 2015, Daniels worked at Turn 10 and on the Forza Motorsport series. Thus, his nearly 11-year career at the company came to an end with the latest wave of layoffs.

The layoffs coincided with a much larger change in the series’ development structure. Microsoft announced that the next main Halo game will be developed under Activision management by a new team specifically created for this project. A smaller team will remain at Halo Studios to support existing games and the community.

Official details about the new game have not yet been shared. Some claims suggest that a playable prototype exists and is awaiting Microsoft approval, but this information has not been confirmed. Daniels’ situation is one of the most striking examples of how suddenly restructuring can affect employees.

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