Following the cancellation of Contraband by Microsoft last month, Avalanche Studios Group, best known for their development of the Just Cause series, have announced that they plan to reduce the size of their teams, and close one of their studios.
This comes at a time when development studios all over the world are struggling with the rising costs of development, and it also follows a slew of other big projects that Microsoft has recently cancelled, which naturally draws their long-term strategy into question.
The future of Avalanche Studios Group
With the closure of the Liverpool studio, that leaves branches of Avalanche Studios Group in Malmo and Stockholm. Both of these studios are seeing overhauls as they “reduce our workforce and restructure the teams to address our games’ needs.”
These changes come from announcement on the developers’ website, but no specific numbers were offered about the number of employees affected.
This is not the first time that Avalanche has undergone these kinds of changes. In 2024, the developer had to close offices in both New York and Montreal – with the latter only opening a year before that closure.
What had at once seemed like a very promising expansion now appears to be suffocating, with that same announcement citing “challenges to our business and the industry.”
Microsoft Cancelled Games
While many of the titles that are now getting cancelled, such as Perfect Dark and now Contraband, were all announced several years ago, it’s already evident that something has shifted in the Xbox strategy.
The most notable aspect of this is the increase in multiplatform games from developers under the Xbox Studios brand. While this started with smaller games like Pentiment, it eventually became clear that even larger exclusives, like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and The Outer Worlds 2, would also come to other platforms.
This culminated recently in the announcement of a new flagship title for Microsoft, with Forza Horizon 6 also releasing on PS5.
This might mean that less emphasis is placed on the investment in big budget titles that draw people to the platform, especially if Microsoft make more money off of these multiplatform details and Game Pass subscriptions.
