Replace 7/2: Sport Developer has confirmed the closure of The Initiative. In keeping with an electronic mail despatched to workers by Matt Booty, head of Xbox Sport Studios, the studio is being shut all the way down to “modify priorities and focus sources to arrange our groups for higher success inside a altering trade panorama.”
This electronic mail matches the one shared by Home windows Central.
Our unique story continues under:
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 going down within the midst of mass layoffs at Xbox and throughout Microsoft. The multinational conglomerate introduced right now it’s shedding 4 % of its workforce. In keeping with Home windows Centralthe studio is being shuttered following the cancellation of the Good Darkish reboot. This additionally will outcome within the cancellation of its improvement partnership with Embracer-owned sport studio Crystal Dynamics.
Improvement on the reboot has been reportedly turbulent on account of clashes between builders and lack of clear imaginative and prescient from studio management. As of 2025, the sport would have been in improvement for 7 years (IGN reported that the sport was successfully rebooted in 2022, and was years away from launch).
This joins different stories circulating right now that Microsoft is cancelling different video games and shedding their improvement groups. In keeping 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 stories that Uncommon’s Everwild has additionally been dealt the identical destiny.
All three video games share the identical unlucky trait of getting been in improvement for nicely over 5 years.
Sport 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 modifications which can be essential to place the corporate and groups for achievement in a dynamic market,” the spokesperson stated, earlier than pointing us to a duplicate of Booty’s electronic mail obtained by Selection.
