Doom Creator John Romero Revives Xbox-Canceled Game At New Publisher

Romero Games' next shooter has found a new publisher

The fate of the next game from Doom creator John Romero was in jeopardy after Xbox canceled the project last year. Thankfully, Romero confirmed in a new interview that the project will see the light of day, as his studio has found another publisher.

Romero Games has found a new publisher

John Romero and his wife, game designer Brenda Romero, founded Romero Games over a decade ago and have made Gunman Taco Truck, Empire of Sin, and Sigil episodes in Doom + Doom II. The studio planned to make the jump to AAA shooter development with help from Xbox Game Studios, but Xbox dropped the project during its mass layoffs in 2025. Romero Games had to lay off more of its developers in turn.

In a recent interview with Video Games Chronicle, John Romero revealed more about the project's journey and confirmed that he was finally able to rehire some of the developers he had to lay off. Romero Games downscaled from 110 developers to just 5 initially, as they couldn't find funding. They still owned all the IP related to the project and eventually found someone to pick it back up.

"I just contacted somebody that I knew, and we basically did a deal, and so we have a new publisher," Romero revealed before admitting he "can't say anything about who it is, or when the announce is, or any of that stuff."

As of Oct. 2026, Romero Games employs around 15 developers. The game has been re-scoped accordingly, with Romero admitting the smaller team couldn't complete the game as originally envisioned under Xbox.

"So this is a complete redesign of a totally different game, but it uses a lot of the work that we had in the previous games. So it’s like ‘here’s all these characters that we can move over’, you know?" Romero explained. "Art, code assets – I mean, shooters have a lot of common code – so we’ve moved a bunch of stuff over to the new game, which got us a big head-start, starting with really great art, cool weapons, all that kind of stuff."

Whatever final form Romero Games' next game ends up taking, it's great to see that some parts of the original project were useful and will see the light of day in some fashion. Other similarly impacted studios haven't been as lucky.