When Microsoft announced Phantom Dust for the Xbox One in 2013, legions of fans who had greatly enjoyed the original title on the original Xbox found their hopes for a follow up suddenly, improbably, coming true against all odds- a Phantom Dust sequel was indeed going to be a thing. But then, rumors of the game’s troubled development started to surface, followed by the game being suspended indefinitely going forward, and at this point, a lot of people simply believe that the game is dead. But Phil Spencer insists that this is not the case- that Microsoft is still committed to doing a new game in the series.
“At some point, if I had to say it was a dead thing, I would just say it,” Spencer said in an interview with Polygon. “I do probably in hindsight, knowing everything I know now — which clearly I didn’t at the time when we announced it — I feel bad that we stood on stage and announced something that now we’re not delivering. That’s never my goal. But we had a plan to actually go build the game at the time. So I’m still encouraged.”
But why bother with a new Phantom Dust? The original game was a cult classic, sure, but it didn’t exactly light the charts on fire- and Microsoft’s franchise approach to first party development has shown us that they prefer big name hits more than anything else.
“I love Phantom Dust – I think the mechanics in Phantom Dust were ahead of their time, and I think about what today’s platforms enable and bringing that gameplay mechanic and story and setting to even, frankly, the 360 – and we kind of did that with the back-compat stuff we did then – but definitely today’s world would really help cement what that game could’ve achieved.”
Alright- so Spencer personally wants a new Phantom Dust game, and he says that Microsoft is committed to doing it eventually. But what is the game’s status right now? Have they at least found a new development team? What are they looking for in the studio that eventually gets the game?
“In terms of the studio that we’d find [for Phantom Dust], we’d want to find a good fit… I remember when we first announced that Killer Instinct was coming back, and when we announced who the developer was, we got a lot of ‘Oh, they’re not gonna do the job that everybody wants them to do!’ And I think when people saw what they were able to bring: Even though they didn’t really have a history of doing Killer Instinct, once we met with them, it was clear that those guys really got the IP.
For me, it’s more about finding a team that really gets the IP and understands what it is than where they’re from, and having [Yukio] Futatsugi-san involved with it would clearly help with making sure we don’t lose that,” said Spencer.
Phantom Dust is currently scheduled to release for the Xbox One eventually.
