Xbox Laid Off the Guy Who Created FanFest Three Months After Bringing It Back

Chris Munson, the Microsoft employee who originally created Xbox FanFest, was laid off on July 6 as part of the company's latest round of mass cuts — the same wave that affected 1,600 people across Xbox. The timing is brutal: FanFest only just returned to LA in June for Xbox's summer 2026 showcase, three months before Munson lost his job.

Munson joined Microsoft in 2010 as part of the Halo marketing team and spent 15 and a half years working across Halo, State of Decay, new IP development, sports partnerships, and FanFest itself. He announced the layoff on LinkedIn with a measured post: "After 15 1/2 years, I was affected by the layoffs at Xbox today. End of an era." He added that he plans to take time to reflect before pursuing his next move. Munson originally launched Xbox FanFest in 2015 as a way to bring players directly into events like E3 press briefings and Gamescom previews — fans got face time with figures like Major Nelson and Phil Spencer in exchange for their enthusiasm and engagement.

The event went dormant for years before new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced its return in March, saying she had "heard clearly that our community values Xbox FanFest" in her first month on the job. The June showcase made a splash by giving every live audience member a free 25th anniversary translucent green Xbox Series X. That goodwill gesture now sits awkwardly alongside the layoffs that followed a month later — including the person who built the event in the first place.

Xbox FanFest 2026 isn't over: more events are still scheduled globally through the rest of the summer and into fall. But the optics of cutting Munson so soon after reviving his signature project — and after publicly celebrating the community he helped build — are hard to ignore. The broader restructuring Microsoft described as its most significant in Xbox history continues to reshape the division.