At E3 2021, Microsoft announced Contraband, an open world co-op action-adventure game being developed by Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios exclusively for Xbox, but other than that brief CG announce trailer and a very basic premise, we have next to no details on the game. Seeing as it’s clearly in early development, it’ll probably be a while before we see more of it, though we might have a brief update on the game’s development side of things.
As spotted on Twitter by @bogorad222, as per the LinkedIn profile of Christopher Supino – who is a lead producer at Avalanche – it seems the development team of Contraband is comprised of over 150 people across Avalanche’s New York and Stockholm studios. For context, Just Cause 4 had a team of over 100 developers working on it, according to Supino’s profile.
Supino’s profile doesn’t explicitly mention Contraband, but that is, of course, the next big project that the developer has lined up right now. It’s also worth noting that once outsourcing is taken into account – which is something of a given with most AAA productions these days – the number of people working at Contraband is going to be even higher.
Contraband is in development for Xbox Series X/S and PC. A report earlier this year claimed that the game is currently targeting 2023 launch.