While Xbox might still be thinking about what it wants do with Arkane, the original founder of the studio, Raphael Colantonio, has expressed interest in potentially acquiring Arkane. In a tongue-in-cheek social media response to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s announcement, Colantonio asked the company how much it would cost to acquire Arkane.
“Regarding Arkane… how much? I’m asking for a friend,” wrote Colantonio. While this might give fans of the studio some hope, it is worth noting that Colantonio was likely just joking about potentially buying Arkane. While he has gotten plenty of replies that add in on his joke, with fans asking if they can help the acquisition by sending him money, others have taken his social media post more seriously.
Interestingly, Colantonio has been quite critical of Xbox in the past. In July last year, he had called the company’s Game Pass subscription service an unsustainable business model “that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by Microsoft’s ‘infinite money’”.
This criticism came in light of heavy backlash against Microsoft for having cancelled a host of different projects, following quite a few layoffs. Colantonio’s sentiments were shared by Baldur’s Gate 3’s director of publishing, Michael Douse, who said that Microsoft’s “infinite money thing never made any sense.”
As part of Xbox’s recent layoffs, the company has announced that it is cutting approximately 1,600 jobs, with another 1,600 cuts slated to happen before the end of the fiscal year. Sharma also announced that Xbox is releasing four of its studios – Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, Ninja Theory, and Undead Labs. Arkane has also been targeted for some shake-ups. However, Sharma said that the studio was undergoing consultation while the company reviews “potential strategic options” with its Works Council.
“I know this is painful. These changes will directly affect people who have poured their creativity into building Xbox,” said Sharma. “Many joined us through acquisitions, while others were recruited here, or sought us out because they loved this industry and loved Xbox. Today’s decisions do not reflect their talent or dedication.”
As for Arkane, the studio has been working on Marvel’s Blade for quite some time. Rumors from last year have indicated that Arkane has also started working on an entirely new AAA game since 2024 after completing its “prototype validation”. This means that the project’s pre-production work had been wrapped up and that the studio had moved on into full production.
Arkane is popular among fans of immersive sims thanks to the studio’s work on games like Dishonored, Dishonored 2, and 2017’s Prey. In April 2025, Colantonio expressed interest in someday working on a new Dishonored game.
“I’d love to,” said Colantonio. “I mean, we’re talking totally hypothetically at this point – I could see myself working on Dishonored 3 right now because it’s been so long that, you know, why not?”
He also noted that developers at the studio had their own ideas for Dishonored 3. Whether the studio would ultimately go with ideas presented by Deathloop director Dinga Bakaba or those of series creator Harvey Smith remains to be seen, since the ideas hadn’t been pitched at the time.
