Microsoft Layoffs May Have Killed a Brand-New Age of Empires Game

Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs may have buried a brand-new Age of Empires game before it ever saw the light of day. The internal studio World’s Edge — the team responsible for overseeing the real-time strategy franchise since 2019 — has lost at least half its staff and been folded into Activision’s domain, and key figures behind the series, including former Studio Creative Director Adam Isgreen, are now gone. According to a jigsaw of posts shared on X by gaming journalist Idle Sloth, the timing of the firings coincides with a cancelled internal project, pointing to the loss of what was widely expected to become Age of Empires V.

The evidence has been pieced together from comments left by victims of Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs. Idle Sloth noticed that Isgreen had posted to LinkedIn ahead of the firings, noting that World’s Edge had “some great plans for what’s next,” while Andrew Martz, a Senior Software Engineer, wrote to his own profile that “our next project was cancelled.” The two statements, taken together, paint a picture of a studio that was actively developing something new — and then quietly stopped.

“We had some great plans for what’s next – and I hope the team that remains can rise to the occasion down the line.”

Adam Isgreen (formerly Studio Creative Director)

While this doesn’t definitively confirm the death of a new Age of Empires title, every sign points in that direction. World’s Edge was created to be something of a peculiarity within Xbox — rather than a development studio itself, it existed to oversee the Age of Empires franchise within Microsoft, an IP the company has owned since 1997, supervising multiple studios working on the series’ games. When we spoke to World’s Edge executive producer Earnest Yuen a couple of years ago, he explained, “The way World’s Edge was set up from the very beginning was to be a studio that managed the Age of Empires franchise, following something similar to say, the Marvel studio!”

Over the last six years, World’s Edge oversaw the remakes of Age of Empires II, III, and IV, as well as Age of Mythology and the Age of Empires mobile game. With as many as eight studios working on a game at a time, the company coordinated these endeavors thanks to talent like Isgreen, who worked on some of the biggest names in RTS since 1993, including Command & Conquer and Star Wars: Empire at War.

The hope has long been that this machinery was leading toward the much yearned-for Age of Empires V, a brand new project rather than a remake. In 2024 we put this to Yuen, suggesting, “It does sound a lot like you’re in a position where you kind of want to make something new?” His hesitant response went, “So… I… We… I would love…” before yet again catching himself and redirecting the subject back to Mythology: Retold’s imminent release.

A Studio Reduced to a Shell

The scale of the cuts is staggering when viewed against World’s Edge’s track record. The studio has been the beating heart of one of gaming’s most beloved and enduring franchises, coordinating a sprawling network of developers across multiple platforms. Losing at least half its workforce in a single wave — and being absorbed into Activision’s structure — leaves the franchise without the central creative leadership that shaped its modern identity. The departure of Isgreen and colleagues like Martz removes the exact people who were, according to their own posts, working on the next chapter.

What makes this particularly painful for the community is the contrast between the franchise’s recent success and this sudden uncertainty. Age of Empires IV and the Age of Mythology remaster have both been critical and commercial hits, and the mobile title has expanded the brand into new territory. Yet the very structure that delivered those results has been dismantled, raising questions about the future of a series that has defined the RTS genre for over two decades.

Looking Ahead

We’ve reached out to Microsoft, and to former World’s Edge employees, to see if this rumor might be true. As of now, the company has not publicly commented on the fate of the project in question, and no official statement has been issued regarding the loss of a new Age of Empires game.

What remains clear is that the franchise is at a pivotal and precarious moment. The talent that built World’s Edge into a Marvel-style franchise hub has been scattered, and the plans Isgreen described as “great” appear to have been shelved alongside them. Whether Age of Empires V will eventually rise from the ashes of these layoffs, or whether the next entry will come from a different studio entirely, remains to be seen — but the window for the original vision has, for now, closed.