Bethesda and Xbox development studio id Software, maker of the Doom franchise, has deepened its partnership with fellow Bethesda and Xbox studio MachineGames, makers of the most recent Wolfenstein games as well as 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
At a press event earlier this week for id Software’s Doom: The Dark Ages – Revelations DLC, which was released this summer, studio co-director Marty Stratton was asked how the studio is doing in the wake of the layoffs that affected id as part of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s ongoing Xbox “reset.” He answered, “We’re doing great. Not to handwave the [layoffs] away…everybody knows we had about half of our studio exit as part of that. But there was a very deliberate effort to make sure that we were incredibly viable coming out of that across everything we do, across game development and technology department.
“We’re working more closely with MachineGames than ever. We’ve always had a very close partnership with them, but I think we’re at a point with technology development that both teams are incredibly talented and have incredibly talented engineers and we’re really on an amazing path that had started pre-[layoffs]. We’d kicked this off earlier this year. We’re really excited about that. We’re both really really bullish on what we have ahead.”
This is purely speculative on my part, but might the two decorated first-person shooter studios be co-developing MachineGames’s next project, which is heavily rumored to be Wolfenstein 3 – with studio head Jerk Gustafsson saying, “We’re not done with Wolfenstein yet”? Not only has MachineGames used id Software’s idTech engine for every one of its games, but Sharma has publicly stated that she wants Xbox’s development teams to double down on their biggest franchises – a sentiment echoed by Bethesda boss Jill Braff. And with id now seemingly done with Doom: The Dark Ages following the oustanding Revelations DLC, a team-up with MachineGames might help get the rumored third Wolfenstein game out the door faster, and getting games out more quickly is one of Sharma’s goals.
In addition, while Doom should certainly be considered in that “biggest franchises” group, Wolfenstein most likely is as well. Plus, Amazon has a Wolfenstein TV series in development, which might further incentivize Xbox and Bethesda to pair up id and MachineGames to make sure the latter team’s next game is as awesome – and out as quickly – as possible. Bu whatever either team does next, the project(s) will be highly anticipated, at least by me, as both teams have incredible track records, both historically and recently.