id Software co-founder John Romero says that his studio's axed Xbox title has a new publisher, with a smaller staff reworking the game's scope.

Romero Games announced that it was working on an "all-new FPS with an original, new IP" back in 2022. But in the summer of 2025, in the wake of what has become yearly layoffs at Xbox, the project was seemingly cancelled. It became clear after the announcement that the game's unannounced publisher had been Xbox, and Romero Games was put at risk of shutdown in the wake of more Microsoft cuts.

Now, over a year later, Romero has updated VGC on the studio's current standing. He says that the studio kept on staff "as long as we could, trying to find funding to finish the game." But eventually, the studio was forced to "do redundancy and then figure out what we're going to do with a super-small team."

The team of 110 people went down to five at one point, but Romero says that the FPS title has a new publisher, and that the studio has "brought 10 people back." The returning devs were "the leads of the different sub-teams that we had." The game is being redesigned in accordance with the smaller team.

"We don't need to be bigger than that, the game is scoped for a team that's that size and we're just super happy," Romero explains. As far as the original plans, he says, "We're not getting that game to the end.

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