If you’re a Windows Central reader, you’ll be aware that this was (mostly) a pretty bad week for Xbox, with Microsoft yet again conducting layoffs across its gaming division. One of the numerous casualties was The Initiative, a studio founded in 2018 that was working on a revival of Perfect Dark.
Ultimately, my thoughts are with all of the Microsoft Gaming employees that have lost their jobs. That’s the greatest loss above anything else, and I want to make that crystal clear.
With that in mind, Perfect Dark being canceled is a particular sore spot for me in the midst of this whole mess. This was far and away the game I was most looking forward to from Xbox Game Studios.
It represented so many different things: A willingness to invest in a reviving an older series with a fresh perspective, a commitment to starting new studios from the ground-up, and an eagerness to see a high-budget immersive sim at a time when the genre doesn’t get much attention from bigger publishers.
All of that is gone.
There were signs, of course, that things weren’t going well for a time. The Initiative publicly struggled, with reports of staff joining and leaving as progress wasn’t made in anything resembling a timely manner.
All of that can and should be noted. But even so, Xbox leadership allowed the work to continue, demonstrating a willingness to let the studio figure things out, if perhaps not a (needed) willingness to interfere and guide the team in a hands-on fashion.
Things seemed to finally turn the corner in 2024, with a guided gameplay demonstration for Perfect Dark at the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase that showed sleek spy combat in an immersive sim-esque setting, all with a striking near-future art direction.
Joanna Dark engaged in free-running and leaping up buildings with impressive agility, using guns and gadgets to evade detection and take out various targets. It was impressive, so much so that it was easily my favorite game from the showcase.
Even in the lead-up to this presentation, Microsoft had shown a willingness to shutter teams, closing three ZeniMax Media studios, including Japanese developer Tango Gameworks. Tango was admittedly revived and sold to Krafton, so it does live on, just not at Xbox.
Still, the teams presented this game alongside other then-upcoming blockbuster titles like id Software’s DOOM: The Dark Ages. The message was clear: “Yes, we’ve closed some teams, but these here are projects we believe in.”
President of game content & studios Matt Booty even made an appearance to following the presentation, noting that he couldn’t wait to share more from the team in the future. A year later, he’s sending an email to staff explaining that the game has been canceled.
Not everyone at The Initiative was there for the entire seven years of the team’s existence as a studio, but it was a part of people’s lives. It was work they hoped to see culminate in something awesome, and (at least from what we got to see) it was a vision that stood out and had promise.
There’s been some chatter online that the presentation was completely fake, an idea that’s contested by developers that worked on the vertical slice. At the end of the day, that part doesn’t matter compared to how the top brass handled the entire situation.
Either they believed in the project or they didn’t. Did they believe anything they were saying just a year ago? Actions always speak louder than words. Right now, the actions taken by Xbox leadership are deafening.
RIP, Perfect Dark.