I don't think anyone would disagree that 2025 has been a poor year for Xbox Game Studios, despite the success of titles like Oblivion Remastered and The Outer Worlds 2.
The middle of this year saw mass layoffs at Xbox, the closure of a studio and the cancellation of several projects. One of these cancelled projects was in development at Romero Games, the studio of id Software co-founder and Doom creator John Romero. The existence of an Xbox-published project at Romero wasn't public knowledge before its ultimate cancellation.
The sudden cancellation of the project brought Romero Games to the brink of shutting down, but a new publisher stepped in at the last minute to save the project. However, several core aspects of the game had to be reworked, possibly because of the specifics of the studio's contract with Xbox.
According to Insider Gaming, the cancelled iteration of the project was called Hellslayer. In true Romero fashion, Hellslayer had you playing as a priest fighting the demons of Hell. It was a first-person shooter, with a quick restart mechanic similar to Hotline: Miami. The game had been in development for a decade at the Galway-based studio at the time...
