The first being that it will be seen as a new IP to casual consumers due to it being so long since the last 2010 remaster and could turn out to be very successful. Perfect Dark being in this spotlight gives me two potential thoughts. Phil Spencer and the Xbox team have been making Game Pass the face of the platform and I don’t know if Perfect Dark will be able to be that game it needs to bring in new subscribers. With The Initiative being Xbox’s headline studio, I believe that outside of Halo and maybe Gears of War, whatever it works on will be the primary game marketed to get players to jump into the Xbox ecosystem. I think the studio would find more success with an audience if its first project was bringing something brand new to the table. I have no ill will towards the series, and I wouldn’t be opposed to its return, just not with The Initiative. While I believe that this game does have a passionate fanbase and I am personally optimistic about the studio’s take on the franchise, I had hopes that with being Xbox’s new number one studio, The Initiative would have started fresh out the gate with a brand new IP.Įven with doing a reboot, the game needs to be something that your casual gamer would know and I don’t think Perfect Dark is that.
During The Game Awards last week, those speculations were revealed to be true.
This includes those who have worked on beloved franchises such as God of War, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, and others.įor most of 2020, there had been rumors that The Initiative’s first project was going to be a reboot of Perfect Dark - a stealth action-adventure title originally created by Rare back on the Nintendo 64 that gained a relative fanbase. The studio is based out in Santa Monica, CA and since the announcement, multiple big industry names have joined the studio. However, the company has also created what it calls a “AAAA” studio known as The Initiative that has been confirmed to be working on a reboot of Perfect Dark.
For the past couple of years, we’ve seen Xbox enhancing its first-party studios through acquiring a number of major studios such as Ninja Theory and Bethesda/Zenimax.