Xbox and the studios under its purview have been in flux after another massive round of layoffs, but another development house has managed to weather the storm and go independent. 1,600 Xbox employees have lost their jobs, with management planning on doubling that number over the course of the next year.
Four major studios have either been sold off or become independent. Ninja Theory (Hellblade) and Undead Labs (State of Decay) have new owners, while Compulsion Games (South of Midnight) and Double Fine (Psychonauts) have reverted to indie studios. A fifth, Arkane Studios (Dishonored), will eventually meet one of those two fates as well, but a lesser known studio has also survived the carnage at Xbox.
Alpha Dog Games has once again become independent. The change came miraculously after the studio was shut down by Microsoft in 2024, alongside an Arkane studio in Austin, Texas, and Tango Gameworks, which was later acquired by Krafton. Alpha Dog Games is perhaps best known for Mighty DOOM, a mobile roguelike spin-off of the iconic first-person shooter series. The studio specializes in mobile games, and has most recently been "updating key parts of the Unity-based game engine framework that Mighty Doom was built on,"...
