Earlier this year, Microsoft cancelled its reboot of the Perfect Dark franchise, a game that had been in development since around 2018. The title first received a trailer in 2024, years after being announced, during the Xbox Games Show in June of that year, skipping the next year completely, which was an indicator it might have been in some trouble, inevitably being cancelled a month later. After this, we learned that in a bid to save the project, developers involved with the Perfect Dark reboot began shopping the idea around to publishers, one of which approached and the closest to saying yes was Take-Two.
Unfortunately, that deal fell through so we will never know what could have been had that materialised. Two of the project leads, formerly at the now dissolved studio The Initiative, will be working with Take-Two after all, though not in the same context. Jason Schreier, who had previously reported on developer The Initiative approaching Take-Two earlier this year, has now reported via a post on Bluesky that studio head Darrell Gallagher and director Brian Horton have been hired at 2k to open a new studio. No details have emerged yet as to what this new studio will be called or what they will work on, only that they will be under 2K, itself a subsidiary of Take-Two. Whether the two will pull from their former studio for employees for the studio is yet to be seen.
A spokesman for 2K confirmed these hires, stating:
With a combined six decades of AAA game-making experience across franchises like Tomb Raider, Call of Duty, Destiny, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Hitman, Deus Ex, and more, we’re thrilled to confirm Darrell Gallagher and Brian Horton have joined 2K for their next all-new venture. We don’t have additional details to share at this time, but look forward to sharing updates on their work in the future.
The cancellation of Perfect Dark came amid layoffs throughout the entirety of Microsoft, with the game itself having had a troubled development cycle up to then, with studio leads struggling to find an identity for the title, while other studios, such as Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, were brought in to help with the project. Crystal Dynamics, for its part, attempted to shop the project around as well, undergoing layoffs shortly after the deal fell through.
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