Replace 7/2: Recreation Developer has confirmed the closure of The Initiative. In accordance with an e-mail despatched to workers by Matt Booty, head of Xbox Recreation Studios, the studio is being shut right down to “regulate priorities and focus sources to arrange our groups for larger success inside a altering trade panorama.”
This e-mail matches the one shared by Home windows Central.
Our unique story continues beneath:
It seems that has confirmed that Microsoft is shutting down The Initiative, the Santa Monica-based studio tasked with reviving the Good Darkish sequence in 2018.
The closure is happening within the midst of mass layoffs at Xbox and throughout Microsoft. The multinational conglomerate introduced at present it’s shedding 4 p.c of its workforce. In accordance with Home windows Central, the studio is being shuttered following the cancellation of the Good Darkish reboot. This additionally will end result within the cancellation of its growth partnership with Embracer-owned sport studio Crystal Dynamics.
Growth on the reboot has been reportedly turbulent because of clashes between builders and lack of clear imaginative and prescient from studio management. As of 2025, the sport would have been in growth for 7 years (IGN reported that the sport was successfully rebooted in 2022, and was years away from launch).
This joins different reviews circulating at present that Microsoft is cancelling different video games and shedding their growth groups. In accordance with Bloomberg video games reporter Jason Schreier, Microsoft has canceled a long-in-development on-line role-playing sport at Zenimax On-line Studios. In the meantime VGC reviews that Uncommon’s Everwild has additionally been dealt the identical destiny.
All three video games share the identical unlucky trait of getting been in growth for effectively over 5 years.
Recreation Developer has reached out to Microsoft for remark and can replace this story when a response is issued.
Replace 7/2: Microsoft has declined to touch upon any particular studio closures following our request for remark. “We proceed to implement organizational and workforce adjustments which might be essential to place the corporate and groups for achievement in a dynamic market,” the spokesperson mentioned, earlier than pointing us to a replica of Booty’s e-mail obtained by Selection.
