Microsoft is trying to sell Arkane, and the process is further along than previously known. According to Bloomberg, whose Jason Schreier spoke to people familiar with the negotiations, bids are on the table from several game companies — Ubisoft among them, plus at least two others. Xbox has also considered selling the studio to its own management, which would make Arkane independent.
No price has been reported and no agreement has been reached. An Xbox spokesperson would only say the company is reviewing options ahead of a December deadline. Ubisoft declined to comment.
What is being sold
Arkane was founded in Lyon in 1999. After the role-playing game Arx Fatalis (2002) it made Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006), and after ZeniMax Media bought it in 2010 it reached a wider audience with Dishonored (2012), Dishonored 2 (2016) and the time-loop shooter Deathloop (2021). Its Austin offshoot made Prey (2017) and Redfall (2023); Microsoft closed the Texas studio in May 2024.
Arkane joined Microsoft in 2021 with the $7.5 billion ZeniMax acquisition. The company has reorganised repeatedly since. In July 2026 Xbox chief Asha Sharma announced about 3,200 job cuts and the departure of several studios; in her memo on Arkane she wrote that management was reviewing strategic options — the phrase that, in this industry, traditionally opens a sale process.
Why now
For Microsoft, Arkane is no longer a growth engine but a studio with an expensive, long-running project. Marvel's Blade was announced in 2023 and is expected to ship within one to two years, according to Bloomberg, and a sale would not stop that work — it would move it off Xbox's balance sheet. That is the pattern of the past two years: not closing studios, but handing them over when a buyer will keep funding the operation.
For Ubisoft it would be a return to a familiar partner. The two companies have worked together before, a Ubisoft-approved community edition of Dark Messiah with co-op and Linux support is currently in development, and Ubisoft still holds the rights to the Might and Magic brand.
What the deal actually signals
The deal's financials are uninteresting while they remain unknown. The direction is not. A studio that made two of the best stealth games of the past decade is for sale while the company that owns it reports record cloud and AI revenue. That is the consolidation logic of the platform era in one sentence: studios are no longer strategic assets, they are positions to be scaled up or exited when the internal return does not clear the bar.
What remains open is what a sale means for the staff in Lyon, and whether Marvel's Blade continues on schedule under a new owner. Both depend on the buyer — and the buyer stays open until the December deadline.
