Amid reports of potential studio closures and mass layoffs, Microsoft has announced the Xbox Game Pass June 2026 Wave 2 lineup of games. It has yet to comment, however, on this week’s rumors that the likes of Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, Psychonauts developer Double Fine, and South of Midnight developer Compulsion may shut down.
As revealed on Xbox Wire, coming to Xbox Game Pass during the second half of June and the early part of July are EA Sports FC 26, which is of course timed to coincide with the ongoing World Cup, RV There Yet?, and Winds of Arcana: Ruination. Meanwhile, 2021 Call of Duty game Vanguard hits Game Pass this month. There are no day one releases for the rest of June, with Junkster releasing today, June 16.
Game Pass soldiers on amid new Xbox boss Asha Sharma’s “reset” of the gaming business, which looks like it will result in a number of high-profile casualties. Yesterday, The Game Business reported that Xbox Game Studios boss Craig Duncan had stepped down, and news of various Microsoft studios potentially closing down emerged soon after. IGN has asked Microsoft for comment but it is yet to respond. Double Fine, however, did issue a single emoji social media post, summing up how it feels right now.
According to Bloomberg, Compulsion, Ninja Theory, and Double Fine aren’t the only Microsoft studios currently negotiating with Xbox to try to avoid closure, either. There is the potential for some or all to buy their way to independence, although that would likely come alongside layoffs, too.
Following Sharma’s "reset" warning, one analyst told IGN "the studios most exposed are brilliant for prestige and rotten for the spreadsheet." Microsoft was then said to be speeding up development on new The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Halo games as it considered restructuring or even spinning off its gaming branch.
Sharma's ground-shaking memo revealed that Microsoft's gaming business currently has a 3% accountability margin (assumed to mean profit margin), which is down year-on-year. "Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue," Sharma said.
Following the release of the memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said "there's more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube" than at Xbox, adding that the Xbox team needed to figure out how to "innovate both in hardware, as well as in the games, going forward in an economically viable way."
"No one can accuse Microsoft of not having invested for the last 25 years," Nadella added. "Now, we have to turn this into a sustainable business that delivers what is fundamentally one of the best sources of entertainment, still."
New Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball recently said Game Pass lost "millions of subscribers" after Microsoft increased prices by 50% in October 2025. One of the first strategy changes Sharma brought in was a price cut.
This week’s grim news marks a significant U-turn on Xbox brand sentiment, after Sharma had started to turn core fans around with a number of crowd-pleasing changes such as the decision to make The Coalition's Gears of War: E-Day and inXile's Clockworld Revolution console exclusives. The Xbox layoffs are expected to come into effect at the end of Microsoft's financial year on June 30.
As usual, a number of games are set to leave Game Pass this month.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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