Microsoft Layoffs Hit the New Age of Empires Game

Microsoft’s restructuring on the Xbox side has been felt quite harshly this time on the World’s Edge front. The team that has managed the Age of Empires brand for years has been drastically downsized, and the studio’s move under Activision has completely changed the balance. Normally, we’re used to hearing “existing projects are continuing” during such periods, but recent employee posts suggest a more worrying picture here. Because it seems that what’s being lost might not just be job positions.

Microsoft Cuts May Also Affect the New Age of Empires Project

LinkedIn posts from former World’s Edge employees have been making it quite easy to piece the fragments together for some time. Adam Isgreen said that before the layoffs, the team had “great plans for what was next,” while Andrew Martz directly stated, “our next project has been cancelled.” There’s no confirmed Age of Empires V announcement from Microsoft yet, but considering what the studio has been doing, it naturally leads one to believe it.

World’s Edge wasn’t originally a standalone game development studio in the classic sense. Microsoft created this team to manage the Age of Empires brand, coordinate different developers, and plan the future of the series. In recent years, the coordination behind Age of Empires II, III, and IV, the Age of Mythology projects, and the mobile game has been handled here. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the canceled “next project” is unrelated to the series.

Even more interesting is the signals the studio gave in the past regarding a new Age of Empires game. In 2024, when executive producer Earnest Yuen was asked if a new project was being worked on, he didn’t give a clear answer but explicitly stated that many people on the team wanted to make more Age of Empires games. At the time, these words strengthened the possibility of an Age of Empires V.

Now, it’s being rumored that at least half of the studio has been laid off and World’s Edge has come under Activision management. Therefore, even if a new Age of Empires game was indeed being prepared, it’s difficult to assume the project is continuing in the same way. Microsoft has yet to disclose what the canceled project was. But putting the pieces together, it doesn’t seem unlikely that the long-awaited new main game in the series has been one of the silent victims of this remake.

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