In a shocking announcement made late yesterday evening, Microsoft’s premier studio, The Initiative, announced that Square Enix-owned developer Crystal Dynamics would be brought in to help with the development of Perfect Dark. The Initiative, which was founded in 2018, was touted as Microsoft’s triple-A developer, tasked with making groundbreaking Xbox-exclusive games that would rival Sony’s in-house titles such as Uncharted, God of War, and The Last of Us.
Now, just three years after The Initiative’s founding, its reboot of the beloved Perfect Dark series looks like it is in more than a little bit of trouble. In fairness, the writing has been on the wall for several months now. Drew Murray, a co-founder of The Initiative and lead designer on Perfect Dark, left the studio in February 2021, shortly after the game was unveiled at The Game Awards with a vague CGI trailer.
Insider reveals Xbox's Perfect Dark reboot struggles in development, far from ready despite ongoing efforts.
The hits just keep on coming. Will not be surprised if this gets canned. It already got rebooted and they had to bring on an outside studio to try and help developement. Some of the original creatives have left the project.
But I will say, just wait until the MS showcase. If you don't see it there, then alarm bells should start ringing.
God, please don't screw this one up Microsoft! I am keeping my expectations super low, but Perfect Dark (the original) holds such a special place in my childhood. I want this to turn out well SO bad.
Just cancel it because we know you won’t be happy with its sales performance while giving it away on GP day one. GP is the biggest issue for developers and that affects the sales. No one can deny that now. GP equals to good deal for gamers and bad deals for AAA development. Take two CEO said it and he was 100% right. There are certain games that make sense on GP but not every game. 20 million gamers playing a game on GP doesn’t mean much to MS it seems because they still want sales. Just please start releasing all games on other platforms otherwise Phil is next now. You can’t spend 80 billion and be this bad
The studio was founded in 2018. It's still not adding up in my head how it can take 6 years to develop a game, with a whole dev studio working on it.
This is the only upcoming MS game I'm looking forward to. I hope it doesn't get canceled.
Kevin writes: "The upcoming Xbox Showcase 2024 is going to be important for the future of Xbox consoles and Game Pass, and here's 7 things we want to see."
Perfect Dark would be cool but I’m hoping for Fable. I’m really interested where they’ve taken the game.
Looking ahead now, I'd say Avowed is what I'm looking forward to most in the fall. Obsidian's been nothing but quality and consistency so I can't wait to see what they've been cooking
From Contraband to Perfect Dark, here are some potential wildcard surprises that could appear at this month's Xbox Developer Direct.
Wow I actually commented in a Xbox thread before Jin_Sakai! Contraband gameplay would be dope.
The way this is being presented in the media is wrong. The question should be why is it that Microsoft "AAAA" studio can't get the job done on it's own? And why can't Microsoft with it's 20 studios get it done internally.
How many years has Phil been in charge yet they are still struggling this much to put anything out. And of course it's not just this game Halo's development seems to be in bad shape as well...
You sure about that? Their games have gotten progressively worse till we got the absolute crap pancake that was the avengers. Plus why does the "AAAA" studio need a help partnership from an external studio? Thought it was supposed to be MSs biggest?
3 years of development hell and now another team has to come in to rescue the game? If this is "AAAA" gaming I don't want it.