Former Elder Scrolls Online boss describes Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin closing as a turning point at Xbox: 'I know where this is going'

In a recent interview with MinnMax, ZeniMax Online Studios founder Matt Firor described his reaction to his MMO, Project Blackbird, getting canceled, as well as his more general thoughts on the current moment in the industry. To hear Firor tell it, the closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks on the same day was recognized as a sign of things to come inside Xbox.

Firor said that the one-two punch caused developers to, in Firor's words, see themselves in an "EA 2008" situation, a reference to the publisher cutting 1,100 jobs in response to the '08 Financial Crisis at the beginning of 2009, with an even larger 1,500-person layoff to come later in the year. Firor said that the presence of industry veterans at ZeniMax Online primed them to recognize this likely meant more hardship to come.

"[The Elder Scrolls Online team] was hundreds and hundreds of people by that point," said Firor. "The Blackbird team alone was 300. We had people that worked everywhere. That day, people just came into my office like, 'I've seen this before. I know where this is going.' We had people leave in the weeks after that, just because it didn't feel good."

Firor also reiterated that this is an industry-wide problem, not just an Xbox one: "I know we're talking about Xbox here, and specific situations, but these situations happen way too often all over the place." Even with that being said, though, Firor seemed optimistic about the industry as a whole, saying elsewhere in the MinnMax interview that he sees the current industry layoff crisis as being of a piece with previous boom and bust cycles.

There doesn't seem to be much consensus about the state of things, though, other than "it's bad." In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, legendary designer Brenda Romero said that, "We were there in the '80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier."