Xbox Recreation Studios’ new Excellent Darkish recreation — the mission that was first revealed in 2020 because the debut title from inside studio The Initiative — has been canceled. Matt Booty, head of Xbox Recreation Studios, confirmed the sport’s cancellation and the closure of The Initiative in a word to staff, in line with a report from Home windows Central.
“We’ve made the choice to cease growth of Excellent Darkish and Everwild in addition to wind down a number of unannounced initiatives throughout our portfolio,” Booty stated. “As a part of this, we’re closing one in every of our studios, The Initiative. These choices, together with different modifications throughout our groups, mirror a broader effort to regulate priorities and focus assets to arrange our groups for higher success inside a altering business panorama. We didn’t make these decisions calmly, as every mission and group symbolize years of effort, creativeness, and dedication.”
The reboot of Uncommon’s Excellent Darkish franchise was revealed at The Recreation Awards 2020, two years after Microsoft based The Initiative, the Santa Monica, California-based studio led by Darrell Gallagher, former studio head at Crystal Dynamics. Xbox Recreation Studios re-revealed the brand new Excellent Darkish throughout a 2024 exhibiting of the sport, which was stated to concentrate on ecological sci-fi themes.
Final yr, Booty stated Excellent Darkish would concentrate on “a near-future battle over superior tech that threatens the lives of thousands and thousands.” Taking part in as heroine Joanna Darkish, gamers would make use of stealth, parkour, high-tech gadgetry, and good old school firearms to fend off world catastrophe. The sport was deliberate to function parts of first-person shooters, immersive sims, and stealth-action.
Excellent Darkish was being developed by The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics for Xbox Sequence X and Home windows PC. The sport by no means had an introduced launch date.
The unique Excellent Darkish was launched on Nintendo 64 in 2000. A remaster was launched for Xbox 360 in 2010. Uncommon adopted up the unique recreation with a by-product for Recreation Boy Shade in 2000 and a prequel, Excellent Darkish Zero, in 2005.
