'We're Victims of Xbox's Change in Strategy': Dishonored Dev Has Weeks to Save Itself

Long live Game Pass and Call of Duty. I hope everyone who defended them 6 years feels really great about themselves.

Do Arkane Games really sell well enough in this day and age to fund to the tune of hundreds of millions.

financially it must not be making sense if no one wants to buy the studio

I imagine blade will be cancelled

Prey is in my pantheon of top story/sim games and I’ll be starting Dishonored soon. Just another victim of Moneybags Spencer’s GamePass grift.

They chose to be bought right? Sony is an entertainment company. Microsoft is Business - put your eggs where you like when you sellout - but you chose to be sold, like the others

I wonder if the Blade IP is putting people off buying them. Blade is known but has never been a massive seller compared to other Marvel properties, and while Arkane make great games, they have never been a juggernaut. I can't imagine many potential buyers being pleased that after purchasing Arkane, the next game they release will have a percentage of the income go to Disney instead of recouping the cost of the studio. Hoping for a buyer however, I love Arkane games.

@get2sammyb yes but then look at stuff like Guardians of the galaxy that was a fantastic game didnt sell.

I think wolverine and spiderman sold because they were sony first party games not just because it was marvel

@8th_Observer Prey is such a great game but another game that didnt sell didnt even sell a million copies

@Timewarp87 Not really, Arkane was owned by Zenimax prior to the Xbox acquisition

@trev666 I'd say outside of Insomniac and Marvel Rivals (Tokon seems to be doing okay too) almost every other Marvel console game has been a pretty massive disaster or they're stuck in some form of development hell.

Poor decision making, poor games compared to the competition and then blowing $60 billion on Activision just to then put its biggest money maker on Gamepass causing massive amounts of lost revenue have contributed to this. Long gone are the glory days of the 360......

gaming is imploding at the moment

AAA games with budgets of hundreds of millions is making less and less sense

This is a disaster, I hope they sort it out but I can't pinpoint a buyer they'd make sense for...

@get2sammyb I think something has to give in the AAA space Sammy. We can't keep going on like this or game costs will keep getting higher and more studios will close because games will need to sell more and more copies in a stagnant console player base who mostly only care about live service stuff.

I don't know what they could possibly do to rein in costs though.

These stories are the reason why the ps6 and new x box is all ready dead there won't be any game to rent on them
And with getting rid of the disc drive is the last nail in the coffin for the ps6 it may as well be a shed with with a fan 😀

Somehow Xbox is riding a wave of good PR? Lmao gamers care more about losing physical discs than they do about a company cutting 3,200 people’s jobs.

I hope someone buy Arkane cause it would be a really sad day if a talented devs like them ended on MS graveyard

@get2sammyb
The average customer, no not their fault.
To the people who flooded this site, Team XBOX, Twitter and YouTube with videos claiming it was the best thing ever? Yes, we can blame them.

That's a real shame.

The Dishonored games are really good. I'm not sure why they never really caught fire sales wise.

I'm going to have to pick up copies of all 3 at some point just to have them.

Hopefully someone will pick them up.

At least they have a chance for someone to buy them to help them survive, too bad that couldn't have happened with Bluepoint.

It’s not the customer’s fault at all. Phil Spencer bought up all of Bethesda, and did naff all with it outside of Doom and Indianna Jones. Why the hell did he not instantly green light the next Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Dishonored game the moment the contract was signed?

@8th_Observer

You're in for a treat. I hope you enjoy the Dishonored games as much as I do.

@get2sammyb Someone with endless piles of money should snatch them up. Maybe a company like Microsoft could get their hands on them! Oh, wait...

If i say keep American companies out of your country will i sound too radical or fanatic?
The company that i work was also bought by Americans and nothing good is coming out of it.

Funny when some Xbox fans childishly project how Gamepass make profit. How many millions of users generate how much revenue each month, ignoring lots of people back then use 1$ switch and game production can be very expensive, especially with multiple studios. No mater what you say, games price are relatively unchanged over the last 3 decades, while the production cost and developer salary has soared, especially in the West. I think Western developers need to cut down their spending.

I hate Microsoft

@FuzzieGinge88 Just remember when you talk about the "glory days" of the 360 that while it performed well at the start of the generation especially in North America, it did terribly in Japan and Europe (although it was more competitive with PS3 in the UK). By the end of the generation, the PS3 had sold more units. And the Wii comprehensively beat both the Microsoft and Sony machines.

So, when we remember the "glory days" of Xbox as a brand, it is still that time they entered a three horse race and came third. Xbox has never been a success.

Blade was always fine in terms of continued production - I said it months ago when you posted the article saying Xbox wanted to cancel it - https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/06/xbox-wants-to-cancel-marvels-blade-close-arkane-studios

Marvel are actually incredibly unhappy with Microsoft - new publishers are already sniffing around.

“ but more redundancies are coming “

Well every job at these companies is a redundancy when you can just get AI to do it. 😝. Well except those at the top who don’t do anything except pay other people at the top for the AI. 🤬

If MS wants to sell the dev they will. If MS wants to fire everyone but keep the IP for themselves then they’ll ask for a ridiculous amount of money no one will pay and shut it down.

If you’re looking or expecting MS to do anything fair or honorable well…🤣

This is why consolidation is bad, boys and girls.

I know it won’t happen given the current climate but I would love Sony to step in and save Arkane. There aren’t enough immersive-sims as it is, let alone killing the studio which has made the vast majority of those that have released these last 15 years.

@8th_Observer Dude, Prey is so GOATed! And the Mooncrash DLC is a better Deathloop than Deathloop was lol

I wonder if the Dishonored Prey and Deathloop Ips are part of the deal if so I'm surprised no one had brought them yet

If Arkane are all that, you have to wonder why has nobody bought them.

Close to completion seemingly means little to MS, Hellblade 3 & State of Decay 3 were due for release next year & they still got rid of both studios.
I have some hope that Disney could intervene to help Arkane push the game past the finish line. If not financing it themselves, maybe helping to find another publisher that can take on the burden for the final year or so.

@ShadowRJ
Wasn't the majority of the team who would work on Fallout or Elder Scrolls still busy with Starfield? (I am no expert on what studios do what).
And, based on that games quality, are they even capable of making a game like Skyrim again?
Personally, I see Bethesda as a shadow of its former self from before Xbox took them over.

Thats not to say I am defending Phil S or Xbox / MSoft - I think they have made some truly terrible decisions this generation. But to me, I think the problem here was they bought Bethesda in the first place, based on the name, and simply were not in a position to manage all these studios, let alone then going and compounding the issue going after COD / Activision.

Arkane might be one of the best studios out there. Prey and Dishonored 2 are master quality and Deathloop was so creative, and the vibe was on point. I just finished Prey Mooncrasher yesterday lol, and it's another masterpiece from Arkane. Dont let this studio die.. I knew this would happen when Microsoft bough Bethesda... So dissapointing, I really hope they find a buyer... But its not looking likely in this economy... JUST LET THEM DROP BLADE PLEASE!

In my opinion, all this was ultimately caused by Gamepass, and Xbox's desperation in trying to 'buy up' studios and games to fill it.
Exclusives should be used to attract people to the ecosystem and keep them happy, but instead they used them to fill a service that seems unsustainable given how it sucks potential sales from games / studios.

@get2sammyb I'm loathe to stick up for a CEO, but these comments blaming Spencer for this seem unfair. I can't imagine he bought those studios to shut them down. MS are a massively wealthy company. They could have handled this much better.

Everyone seems to forget these studios were for sale they needed the money and would have probably lost their jobs a long time ago if it wasnt for Microsfot buying them

Its funny how the media was praising xbox as the savior fir all these studios not too long ago

@premko1 They released their past games on ps consoles as well. So this news does affect playstation users too. Some people might like to know what's happening with the studio you know?

@Kiltedhaggis
Some people yeah but let's be honest - it's mainly for clicks to rage at Xbox/MS.

@Fyz306903 I’m sure Phil has the best intentions. He was trying to build GamePass as big as Netflix, but unfortunately it’s a strategy that didn’t work.

@get2sammyb
Might be worth updating the article with an update from Bloomberg that brings some hope.

"Let me share some positive news for a change: Despite all the gloomy headlines today, my understanding is that there are multiple paths actively being explored that would save Arkane Lyon. Anything can happen during negotiations, but at this point I'd be surprised if the studio is shut down."

@ShadowRJ this absolutely.

Although it was obvious to even an idiot like me that GP would not work under the pricing of the time (and ALL FP games day 1 especially) so it's a shocker that someone with Phils experience would go for it.

When you look at Microsoft as a whole though, everything is a subscription of some kind so you have to guess the GP decision ultimately came from Satya. It was phils job to implement it and he was set up to fail.

I can't help but feel you'll see Microsoft tilt to a strategy similar to Sony over the next few years I'm terms of GP content.

@Chrisathickson tryin to fuel a one side console war

Reminder that Arkane Lyon has spoken out (anonymously) about Microsoft's involvement in the Palestinian genocide. Somehow I don't think this is just about business.

Sony should buy them and market their games for them cause I can't tell why their masterpieces of games don't sell significantly. Either that or people are just too impatient for stealth or being imaginative in playing their own way as their games always encourage. They are in a hurry to shoot down anything that moves like a typical fps and cry games have gotten stagnant. No wonder they buy on rails games at £70.

That Blade game was teased three years ago and they've had nothing to show for it since, I doubt it's smooth sailing over there.
This certainly isn't a Bioware situation where they hadn't made anything of worth for well over a decade, but still, Arkane is far from its Dishonored days.

@premko1 Last time I checked, all of Arkane’s games from Gen 8 forward minus Redfall (thank god) are also available on PlayStation.

Microsoft is so disgraceful and incompetent at running game studios. Everything they touch, they destroy.

Still not over the fact that Rare is now an Activision support studio. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were put on the CoD factory floor or closed altogether.

@kmtrain83 I still don’t understand why they spent $500 million on E-Day and then cancelled the PlayStation port at the last minute. It’s not like millions of people are buying an Xbox for Gears exclusivity in 2026.

Dishonored is one of my favorite video games franchises ever. All of the games are really good. Word up son

@TheArt Microsoft doesn’t even attempt to market games that aren’t Gears, Halo, Fable, Minecraft, or Forza. Everything else is worthless to them.

Say whatever you want about Sony, but they don’t really let games die on the vine and give them meaningful promotional pushes. Like, they changed the PS app icon for Wolverine! And people on this site were saying that game was headed for an abysmal failure. Marathon would have crashed and burned completely if Sony hadn’t put their marketing machine into force.

Shambolic corporation and I’m seeing comments elsewhere that people hope they buy the Mass Effect I.p. You really think they’re capable of nurturing any kind of beloved ip after everything that has happened this year alone?