What are we even doing, here

There’s plenty to dislike about this latest round of corporate-mandated Xbox misery. The hundreds more human beings losing their livelihoods. The embracing of risk-averse factory line development. The fact that nobody, still, knows what on earth is happening with Arkane.

Personally, I keep thinking of the likely closure of Ninja Theory. Not because I desperately yearn for more Hellblade games in my life – I don’t – but more so how unlikely that proposition seemed, when a thunderous announcement trailer for their Celtic action sequel Senua flashed up on Summer Game Fest screens in June. Four weeks later, the people who made it would be collectively put up for sale. Another eleven weeks later, Microsoft exec Matt Booty would publicly dedicate all of two sentences to how two separate deals had fallen through, triggering a "proposed closure." Possibly the biggest individual failure of the sorry affair thus far, confessed in about the same amount of words as was spent on a new Halo.

It’s a failure that also lends an even more ghoulish edge to that SGF reveal. While Microsoft have never openly explained their reasoning for promoting a game they were about to offload, the most commonly reported explanation is that the sight of an immaculately ray-traced Senua carving up cultists – day one on Game Pass! - would entice potential buyers for Ninja Theory.

That is, clearly, grim. And very possibly counterproductive, if the readiness of the sale were to be interpreted by studio-shoppers as a lack of faith in Senua’s post-release success (and, by extension, in Ninja Theory as a whole). But what I think is usually missing from discussion about that trailer timing is some acknowledgement that all the alternative possibilities are even worse. If Microsoft knew they wanted to sell Ninja Theory and didn’t plan to promote Senua, they’re even crueller than we thought. If Microsoft didn’t know they wanted to sell Ninja Theory and did believe they were simply showing off an upcoming game, they’re even more incompetent and shortsighted than we thought. If Microsoft knew they wanted to sell Ninja Theory and decided against revealing Senua at all, then the NDA’d developers about to lose their jobs are being sent off with two-year gaps in their portfolios. Maybe longer, if they weren’t around for Hellblade II.

Again, the chosen show-then-sell tactic has a nastiness of its own, especially if Ninja Theory staff weren’t clued in on the plan beforehand. But, coldly and logically, you do have to concede that if all that hyper-polished swordfighting footage helped loosen a purse string or two, and thus delivered the devs return to solid ground… would anyone on the outside be wringing their hands about those methods? I don’t know that I would, and I’m wringing mine right now.

But no. Whatever the terms of those two doomed deals, Microsoft – whose wider business is apparently rolling in enough military contract dough to invest in the latest AI wunderwaffe – decided they weren’t worth a studio’s existence. At this point, it matters not what the intent was, nor whether the move was careful strategising or blundering skullduggery, as the sum total of that sparkling summer game reveal has now worked out to zero. Nothing. Oblivion. The Xbox brand’s sole opportunity to scrape a positive outcome from the base of its callousness barrel – to look savvy and cunning, even – and they blow it.

Barring any miracles, then, a blameless, multiple BAFTA-winning Ninja Theory will become the first studio affected by Microsoft’s 2026 cuts regime to close outright. The last chance for something approaching justice is that it takes down any lingering beliefs in Xbox’s benevolence, and frankly basic competence, with it.