While there have been plenty of reports and rumours about the doom and gloom surrounding Microsoft’s recent decision to lay-off more than 9,000 of its employees, several in-development games have also reportedly been cancelled as a result. A new report indicates that one such game – a sci-fi shooter by the studio behind The Elder Scrolls Online, ZeniMax Online Studios – was in seemingly good shape. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer even enjoyed an early build of the game from March.
According to one of Schrier’s sources, Spencer enjoyed the game, codenamed Blackbird, so much that Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty had to physically pull the controller away from him. Since this is from a relatively recent build from March, the fact that the plug was pulled on the game came as a shock to quite a few developers.
“But Blackbird’s cancellation was particularly shocking because it had blown away executives at Xbox just a few months ago.” said Schrier’s source. “During the demonstration in March, Spencer was enjoying the game so much that Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, had to pull the controller away so they could keep the meeting going, according to two people who were in the room.”
While not too many details about what Blackbird was going to be have been revealed, reports have indicated that it was going to be a co-op loot-based shooter in the vein of Bungie’s Destiny.
While things were seemingly going quite well for the development of the title, which had started back in 2018, Blackbird was yet to have entered its full production phase. The title was instead still in pre-production, with the long development timeline largely coming down to the fact that ZeniMax Online Studios was making an entirely new game engine to power the title.
The cancellation of the project also came as the studio was expanding its workforce in order to work on Blackbird. According to a report, the team working on Blackbird had been told by Booty last year that the decision to shut down studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks was specifically made in order to give Xbox the bandwidth to allow teams that need expanding the resources they would require.
In light of all of this happening at ZeniMax Online Studios and Microsoft in general, the studio also announced that its president, Matt Firor, will be leaving the company later this month. The announcement was made by Firor on social media, where he wrote about having worked at the studio for 18 years. Firor’s leadership roles will be taken over by new studio head Jo Burba, executive producer Susan Kath, and game director Rich Lambert.
“While I won’t be working on the game anymore, I will be cheering you on and adding to the thousands of hours I’ve already spent in-game,” wrote Firor in his announcement. “There are many more stories to be told, adventures to be had, and I know this amazing community will carry that shared legacy and success forwards.”
