Massive Microsoft layoffs earlier this year resulted in over 9,000 employees being ejected from the company, and the cancellation of numerous projects. ESO developer Zenimax Online Studios saw its next MMO scrapped, Rare lost Everwild, and Xbox’s sparkling new studio The Initiative was shut down alongside its Perfect Dark project.
One of the most exciting games in Xbox’s line-up before its cancellation, Perfect Dark was set to be a new immersive sim title based on the iconic Rare property. While little is known about what the game actually entailed, Joanna Dark actress Alix Wilton Regan revealed that they spent years creating motion capture performances for the game.
“Everyone was working really hard behind the scenes to bring Perfect Dark back.”
Joanna Dark actor Alix Wilton Regan
“To my knowledge, we were pretty far along, I’d done entire chapters of this universe,” the actor revealed in an interview with The Gamer, explaining that the team had crafted most of the game’s main story beats across 2023, 2024 and the start of 2025.
The actor explained that they were “shocked, surprised, and devastated” when the game’s cancellation was announced. “I did not see it coming. I was absolutely blindsided when the project was defunded. It was devastating. So many people lost their jobs. An entire workforce was disbanded.”
While Regan didn’t confirm the specifics, the actor backed reports that the game almost got saved by Take-Two. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that the game was close to moving to the publisher instead of Xbox, but negotiations fell through. Regan didn’t mention which companies were involved, but revealed that a “slimmed-down version” of the game was planned to keep the game “up and running in some shape or form”.
“I couldn’t say too much about it because I knew The Initiative was in talks to keep Perfect Dark up and running in some shape or form,” They said. “Possibly a slimmed-down version, possibly something slightly different. But certainly, everyone was working really hard behind the scenes to bring Perfect Dark back. And then one day, I heard from the creative director that the deal hadn’t gone through, and that really everything had fallen apart, and production was fully stopping.”
Reports claim that the deal fell through due to negotiations over long-term ownership of the Perfect Dark IP, an IP that Xbox has done little with over the years. While the Perfect Dark game was cancelled, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
As Crystal Dynamics were a huge collaborator with the Perfect Dark project, Alix Wilton Regan ended up securing the role as Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst games. Additionally, Perfect Dark studio head and director Darrell Gallagher and Brian Horton have officially started a new studio under 2K.
Unfortunately, it seems that a new Perfect Dark game simply isn’t on the table anymore, but we’ll likely see some build of the game sneak its way onto the interview in a decade’s time.
