[STEAM] Todd Howard says layoffs at Bethesda were "really tough": "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises"

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As

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announces what's going on with the future of the studio, director and producer Todd Howard has acknowledged the layoffs that have hit the studio as part of

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.

Speaking to

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, Howard calls the cuts at

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"really tough" for him and his colleagues. This latest round of cuts saw

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as part of Xbox's seemingly now-yearly mass layoffs – including

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like Ray Lederer. Bethesda as a whole also got hit hard as we also saw fellow ZeniMax Studios

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and

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face heavy cuts.

Howard adds, "This is Bethesda's 40th anniversary, and there have been periods where we've gone through changes," referring to a portion of the 1990s where the studio was on the brink. But now, he says, "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises and what we need to do to deliver for everybody."

Word over the last week is that Xbox has been pushing Bethesda to focus on marquee titles with Bethesda Game Studios on

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and

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, while the wider ZeniMax studios work on

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.

Howard also spoke about his personal feelings on the layoffs with

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, saying "I've been doing this a long time, whenever you've worked with people for, in some cases, many decades, and they're no longer here, that's really personally very difficult, and difficult for our teams."

These interviews have come alongside word that

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that

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and that

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for a new entry. But with layoffs across Bethesda and Obsidian, as one

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, it's hard not to see this as

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trying to change the subject.

Video game fans are currently quite unhappy with everything going on at Xbox, with thousands of developers losing their jobs, and calling into question how these diminished numbers will affect development going forward. So a big blowout of every Fallout project everyone wants to know about – with nothing to actually show from them – arguably feels more like an attempt at a distraction or reassurance, rather than it being the right time to drop this news.

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