Xbox says all the games shown in the 2025 Showcase are still coming — but why should we believe them?

In mid-June, the Xbox Games Showcase highlighted the newest slate of Xbox titles that was widely celebrated by the community. Now, the fates of some of those games hang in the balance after previously announced titles were abruptly canceled as Microsoft cuts costs to bolster its investments in AI.

Microsoft insists all recently revealed games are safe from the chopping block, including titles from Obsidian like The Outer Worlds 2, Clockwork Revolution, and Grounded 2. Double Fine's Keeper and Black Ops 7 are also in that lot, though even Call of Duty's teams weren't safe from Microsoft's hatchet.

Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty confirmed there are more than 40 games still in development, but it feels impossible to put faith in any Xbox IP at this point — especially when it comes to the titles we haven't seen in a while, like Fable and State of Decay 3.

Xbox's cash cows clearly aren't safe

The most recent wave of layoffs brutally slashed the company's workforce by approximately 9000 employees, adding to a recent layoff spree in May that wiped out an additional 6000 jobs. Microsoft's homegrown studio, The Initiative, was shut down in the bloodbath.

The studio closure brought the cancellation of the reboot of Perfect Dark, which was in production with assistance from Crystal Dynamics.

Perfect Dark was billed as a high-budget AAAA game that had all the right mix of exciting modern gameplay and visuals, coupled with all the sweet nostalgia you could possibly ask for. The game was officially revealed in 2020, but it has been mostly silent since a gameplay trailer dropped in 2022.

Despite the slow development, all the cards were on the table for Perfect Dark to revive the beloved franchise and add a new tent pole to the Xbox lineup.

This week's unapologetically cruel deduction in the workforce by the world's most valuable company, which is currently teetering on the cusp of being valued at $4 trillion, left behind the cold, dead body of Forza Motorsport. Forza Motorsport has historically been one of Xbox's "Big Three" franchises, alongside Halo and Gears.

While the Forza Horizon series remains untouched, seeing Motorsport get the chop after serving as such an important franchise is alarming. At the very least, the Motorsport cancellation should drill into all of us that there are no sacred cows at Microsoft. Love a game at your own peril.

Call of Duty studios Raven Software, High Moon, and Sledgehammer Games also took a beating with layoffs, even as Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is eyeing a Fall 2025 release. Microsoft acquired Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard King (ABK) in 2022 and engaged in a multi-year battle with the regulating bodies around the globe before finally sealing the deal.

Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play battle royale, has struggled throughout late 2024 and early 2025 due to ongoing battles with the proprietary anti-cheat system and player dissatisfaction with the state of the game. There were rumors that if the return of Verdansk to Warzone 2.0 failed to boost player engagement with the game, we may not see a future with Warzone 3.0.

While I initially scoffed at the thought that the entire future of Warzone could weigh so heavily on the launch of one season's content. These cuts have shown me that the future of even blockbuster franchises like Call of Duty just isn't safe.

Call of Duty brings in billions of dollars in revenue annually and is a major blockbuster franchise. But even its future looks bleak, with Microsoft freely cutting into the teams that manage to just barely keep things running as it is.

Xbox-owned Activision has a multitude of high-level job openings listed, even after the Pink Slip Massacre of July 2025. Listings include two Producer roles for Call of Duty, a monetization director, and a multitude of art and programming-based openings.

Xbox Studio Rare, another team absolutely cloaked in nostalgia, also felt the sting of the layoffs and lost big names from its studio leadership in the process. Rare's previously revealed Everwild, one of my most anticipated upcoming Xbox games, was among the debris on the cutting room floor.

While Rare may continue to be propped up for a little while by the success of Sea of Thieves, it's truly difficult to gauge just how much longer the aging open-world pirate adventure can keep the studio afloat.

It's giving…Scalebound trauma

After four years of stunted development, PlatinumGames' Scalebound was canceled by Microsoft in 2017. The game was meant to be a third-person RPG, and the first we saw of it on the E3 stage in 2014 showed it oozing with Devil May Cry-like snappy dialogue, giant and incredibly detailed dragons, and slick action.

But Scalebound just wasn't meant to see the light of day, and its cancellation ultimately led to what is still an ongoing struggle with talent drain for PlatinumGames.

Of all the games left on the cutting room floor by Microsoft, I thought Scalebound hurt the worst. The outcry by the community following the games' cancellation seems like it should have resonated with Microsoft about nixing projects that fans have seen and are waiting for.

Eliminating an already revealed project comes with the hassle of being a waste of resources, especially when we see games that are stuck in development for close to a decade for whatever reason.

And that's without even getting into the games that aren't announced but still create a ripple effect with their cancellations, taking out fledgling studios (as we just saw with Romero Studios, whose unannounced project was canceled by Xbox this week) and removing potential talent from a rapidly exhausting pool of creatives.

Killing off games that have already been revealed also sows distrust in the Xbox community. Falling in love with a project from Xbox now carries an even heavier burden of risk.

What's the point of even looking forward to these announcements and showcases if the games just unceremoniously disappear once the corporation's shareholders demand to see the line go up as the closing bell tolls?

What's to come of the games we didn't see?

I'm still not entirely sure that we've seen the last of cuts from Microsoft and Xbox, and I'm genuinely concerned about projects that fans (including me!) were previously excited about.

While we know the fate of Perfect Dark and Everwild, there's still Undead Labs' State of Decay 3 and Playground Games' Fable reboot somewhere in the wind. Hideo Kojima's Xbox exclusive project, OD, and Ninja Theory's Project Mara are also currently missing in action.

Avalanche Games' Contraband has also gone silent since its initial reveal, even as the team announced in January that it would cease content updates for The Call of the Wild: The Angler to focus on other projects.

Booty's confirmation that the games we saw at the 2025 Showcase is hanging in the air, but there is no guarantee that any of those currently MIA games will see launch in 2025 or even 2026. Windows Central executive editor Jez Corden has confirmed that State of Decay 3 is currently safe, for example, but we can't even trust Xbox's word that it will stay that way.

Microsoft may very well not be willing to wait until 2027 as the leadership continues to look for anything to cut loose to continue propping up investments in artificial intelligence.

Xbox is confirmed to have a presence at Gamescom 2025. I would normally find myself excited for deeper dives into announced games and maybe even a "Just one more thing…" style announcement when it comes to Gamescom, but this year I'm not going to hold my breath.