In the last couple of years, Microsoft has made a lot of business decisions that seemed promising, only for them to wind up being somewhat odd in the long run. They bought Zenimax/Bethesda to develop exclusive content, but then released “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” for multiple platforms. Microsoft promotes themselves as being all about the games; doesn’t matter where they release, as long as gamers are getting great experiences. That is until they cancel them, like they just did with “Perfect Dark.”
In 2000, Rare released the first “Perfect Dark” on the Nintendo 64. At the time, Nintendo owned a large chunk of Rare, and this was the company’s attempt to make their own successor to “GoldenEye 007” but with their own intellectual property. It remains one of the best games for the 64, and when Microsoft purchased Rare, they made the prequel, “Perfect Dark Zero” for the Xbox 360. The franchise went dormant, with the only sign of life being a remastering of the original game in 2010 and its inclusion in the “Rare Replay” collection in 2015.
Then, at The Game Awards in 2020, Microsoft revealed a new studio called The Initiative would be making a “Perfect Dark” reboot. In 2024, a gameplay trailer was released.
All of that was apparently for naught because on July 2nd, 2025, the project was officially cancelled and The Initiative was shut down.
The cancellation comes as part of massive layoffs at Microsoft with reportedly 9,000 employees being cut from the company across the globe. Rare was also impacted as their decade long gestating game “Everwild” was also shuttered. There is no word on how Crystal Dynamics, who joined The Initiative in 2022, will be impacted.
“We have made the decision to stop the development of ‘Perfect Dark’ and ‘Everwild’ as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio,” Xbox Game Studios Chief Matt Booty said. “As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative. These decisions, a long with other changes across our teams, reflect a broader effort to adjust priorities and focus resources to set up our teams for greater success within a changing industry landscape.”
It’s no secret the video game industry is hurting, but a cancellation like this is a big deal. It joins the ranks of the cancelled Wonder Woman and Black Panther titles that were being developed for years. It’s not a good sign when respected and reversed properties are getting canned following all the time and money being sunk into them. We can only hope the best for all of those impacted by the layoffs.
