In 2020, we saw the first trailer for Perfect Dark, but three years later, work on the project is still barely crawling. You can not even dream that the game will debut in 2024 – developers still need a lot of time.
Rebut Perfect Dark is the first project of The Initiative, the new Microsoft studio founded by experienced developers. In recent years, the American giant hired a number of high -class developers, but the project was faced with a fair amount of problems.
The IGN editors confirmed with reference to the source that at the time of the presentation. Even the developers did not know what Perfect Dark was supposed to become:
The studio announced the project, but in fact has not yet started work on it. IGN contacted 13 developers and confirmed that they have not reached significant progress since 2020, when The Initiative was disclosed.
Why? The answer is not glamorous, but rather connected with the realities of game development. The project faced an obstacle to an obstacle, such problems as tense partnerships between developers, polling, technological problems, constant outflow of significant talents and obscure guidelines that kept the game in an suspended state. Although the new partnership with Crystal Dynamics seems to finally bear fruit, numerous sources that have recently worked on the game, they say that Perfect Dark is still "in the earliest stages" development, evaluating that before the release is about two or three years.
The situation is all the more amazing that The Initiative was actually founded in 2018, and over the past five years, the developers were not able to engage in the proper development of the project.
IGN confirmed that although Perfect Dark was supposed to be a big hit, "Aaaaa" And all that, the developers were actually not ready to implement such a large project and wanted to hire external developers. Initially, Certain Affinity was engaged in the creation of the game:
AAAA or not, Perfect Dark was a grandiose project for the fact that, as Gallagher expected [Darrell, the head of The Initiative] will ultimately become a rather small studio, even if experienced high -ranking specialists work in it. According to sources, he planned that The Initiative would work closely with other partners to become successful managers of the Perfect Dark franchise, which will eventually become the long -playing hit of Xbox. And although The Initiative ultimately publicly announced that she will be hired by Crystal Dynamics as a partner, the reality is that during the first few years of Perfect Dark she had another partner for work: Halo developer, Certain Affinity.
The relationship between The Initiative and Certain Affinity at this stage turned out to be a problem, since the first studio (internal for Microsoft) was a smaller team that, nevertheless, consisted of experienced developers, while the second (external) was a large team with an established position. There were unpleasant situations because of this, and the work stalled.
Then there was a pandemic, which caused even more problems, and Microsoft decided not to renew the contract with Certain Affinity. At that time, a small team worked on the project, and the turning point came at the beginning of 2021 – then Drew Murray left the company to move to the InSomniac Games and become a leading designer. This, according to IGN, laid the foundation for the squall of dismissal.
The list of people who changed their jobs in The Initiative to LinkedIn shows that only in 2021 35 people left the company only in 2021. In the first three months of 2022, The Initiative lost another 12 employees, and LinkedIn data show that the studio did not hire the same number of new employees at the same period or even later. Although these numbers are approximate, the people who worked there at that time suggest that about half of the studio was gutted, and the total number of employees was reduced to 30 people at the worst moment.
People began to leave because they understood that the work was going on the wrong pace. It was for this reason that Crystal Dynamics was hired for the initial embodiment of The Initiative plan, but it soon became obvious that the game needed a significant alteration.
Thus, in 2022, almost four years after the formation of the studio, work on Perfect Dark was started, in fact, from zero on Unreal 5. And although the two studios seemed to get along better than in previous cooperation, after a year of the absence of The Initiative, it was not able to lead the development of a large -scale project. Crystal Dynamics, well -equipped with personnel, began to occupy missing leadership positions and take on more and more responsibility for the project. This again led to disagreements and internodists in the departments in which the leaders were on the side of The Initiative.
IGN confirms that after all problems "Team Perfect Dark" finally moves in the right direction, and the developers have a strong foundation, but the developers have about 2-3 years of work to make the gamers be able to touch the long-awaited game.