Seems any pre ABK game that is having difficult dev is getting the axe. I hope moving forward this does not continue
that was one expensive trailer then
The main issue I have is that Xbox is even cancelling games that apparently met all deadlines, like the one from Romero games.
So even if Contraband was on track, it was always likely to be cancelled which sucks.
Wasn’t Contraband meant to be coop focused? Maybe they saw how Firebreak did and CB started looking much less appealing.
Will wait for the full story to come out before passing judgement, as this one for me has been MIA for ages in a similar way to Perfect Dark but without even having had a gameplay trailer.
It did feel like it was probably stuck in development hell no matter what the third party may say (given to maximise the money they get from Xbox they can’t admit missing any gates) as it’s been over 4 years since announcement and we’ve seen and heard sod all…
A shame though for all that work lost and any layoffs that may follow - I did love the early Just Cause games but they’ve got a bit rough in recent years (the early ones the jank was acceptable due to the huge scope back when it was unusual), I do wonder if the “next gen” version of their engine has got even worse from a performance perspective while struggling to be as pretty as many more modern ones…
Definitely a bummer but hardly a surprise. What will be funny is that the media et al will run this as though it’s further evidence of “Xbox crumbling” while ignoring the fact that Sony has cancelled twice as many games in the same window, including Factions, a game the media hyped up like it was going to be the TLOU of GaaS games… without ever having played it.
/rant
Hoping that no one at Avalanche will suffer any layoffs from this.
I don’t think they’re the same type of games beside being co-op, I also think Avalanche has had more success with their games then Remedy.
I’m sure there were issues, but if I’m remembering right, Contraband was one of the games shown early when Xbox was still working on getting things in order.
So it being MIA for 4 years is more of an issue of it being shown too early imo. That of course doesn’t mean that Avalanche wasn’t having any trouble meeting deadlines. Especially, as the type of game Contraband sounded like had a lot of systems that felt like they didn’t really go together. That needed enough fine tuning to get them to make a fun game out if them.
Xbox cancelling half of the games they showed at the 2020 showcase was not something I expected to see. I feel like this generation has been one of growing pains for the brand. In some ways Xbox is bigger than ever, but in others it’s couldn’t be less relevant. What I hope is that Phil, Sarah and Co, have learned from this and now know not to greenlight so many projects at once without them being fully realised and mapped out.
I get that Xbox has canceled games, but Everwild and Perfect Dark were not even a quarter, let alone half, of the games from the 2020 Xbox showcase. And Contraband was the only game from 2021 Xbox showcase that was canceled.
I think majority of here saw this coming. There was no gameplay, no new trailer after announcement, not even a concept art, or at least I think. As someone here has said, many games that are getting canceled are from pre-ABK.
Xbox has grown so much that this barely damper Xbox first party portfolio. That said I can only hope those who has been working on don’t lose their position or worse.
Agreed on the early showing but I meant more that we’ve not seen dev updates or artwork let alone a gameplay trailer when it was likely already in production before the reveal.
The engine has always been my one concern, Apex 2nd gen for example looked amazing in Just Cause 2 but that was 15 years ago and by 4 it was struggling to cope with resolution and frame rates given the game’s complexity - I remember the One had a really low resolution on it, and I couldn’t enjoy it till I played it on the Series X.
Given all those systems they were trying to add plus the difficulty modernising a proprietary engine, the radio silence was making me think we weren’t ever going to see it unfortunately - hopefully they can re-use what they’ve got into a new Just Cause game
Careful there, we wouldn’t want facts to get in the way of narratives. Also, hilarious seeing a rant about the state of Xbox literally after I laid out how it would be used as a sign of “issues” while we see the platform holder literally cancel over a dozen games in less than three years… and after we’ve seen multiple consecutive years of more than healthy Xbox first-party output, especially compared to the aforementioned party…
TBF, these Xbox game cancellations are pretty sad to hear just because they were actually announced. If they were still unannounced, any reasonable person who follows gaming would not bat an eye as games get cancelled behind the scenes more often than we think.
People are so… I’m not even sure hyperbolic is the word, blind? Maybe. Selective. Selective bias. When it comes to Xbox all facts of reality are forgone except what pushes the narrative they want. To be critical on Xbox all these games getting canceled should’ve never been announced and could’ve been better managed. Xbox had nothing to really show far going into this generation. They JUST bought all these studios and started putting out these projects in 2018 and it was only in 2019 that they rebranded and restructured into Xbox Game Studios. And the new console generation started the NEXT year. Xbox jumped the gun in announcements I’d really say between 2018 & 2021. And the outcome is what you’d expect. Not all of these games that were only ever seen once with a CGI trailer came to fruition. That’s valid criticism to Xbox. The problem is all the outlets trying to pretend like Xbox has no games after they just lost the earth shattering and game breaking most hyped game ever of, “that one game that was seen once in a CGI trailer 4 - 5+ years ago.” Sure.
Xbox has officially stated they have 40 projects in the works, but who even cares about that? I don’t trust that. What I trust is that Xbox has had more games release this year alone than the number of cancelations. Xbox Game Studios alone is on track to accomplish that (Avowed, Grounded 2, South of Midnight, Ninja Gaiden 4, Keeper, and the Outer Worlds 2 (that’s 6 new games in one year (there’s also Towerborne though counting EA that was last year)). Xbox is now announcing games when they’re much further along in development and that’s fantastic. I’m not worried about Invincible VS because it’s coming next year and we’ve seen a lot of gameplay. Doom came in less than a year from it’s initial announcement. And wasn’t Ninja Gaiden 4 announced this year at the dev direct? That’s a similar independent studio partner like Avalnche except they didn’t reveal it too early.
Xbox Game Studios is one of the stronger and more consistent publishers out there today, and Xbox as a whole (ABK + Bethesda) is like one of THE biggest publishers period. I really don’t care that much that a game insiders had to keep reminding me ever existed at all is halting development (the actual language doesn’t even say canceled).
The official statement is kinda vague, and it makes me curious what’s going on behind the scenes.
Looking for new funding, most likely.
Yeah, but then wouldn’t they have just said that Xbox Game Studios pulled funding? The statement says XGS publishing and Avalanche have been collaborating on Contraband, and then that it just says active development has stopped. It doesn’t say that XGS pulled out or that they’re looking to move forward without Xbox or even that they’re in ongoing discussions with Xbox about the future. Iike if I read the statement in a vacuum, I’d think Avalanche ran into a development problem not that Xbox canceled funding. And I’m not sure why the studio would choose to leave that vague. Even if it’s just some contractual obligation that’d be super interesting because what contract says “You can’t say we pulled funding, if we pull our funding.”
Well, this sucks.
Not surprised. Haven’t shown anything in over 4 years and what was shown was a CGI logo trailer.