The Embracer Group’s earnings call has been chock full of interesting new bits of information, but one that skated by during the call was a quick update on the state of the Perfect Dark reboot.
Perfect Dark has been in development at the Xbox-owned studio The Initiative for some time now. Earlier this year, reports emerged that the production was in trouble and that a number of key personnel had departed the studio. Shortly after, Xbox announced that Crystal Dynamics, then owned by Japanese publisher Square Enix, would collaborate with The Initiative on Perfect Dark to help get the project back on track and out the door.
Ownership of Crystal Dynamics then changed hands when Square Enix decided it would rather piss money up the wall on blockchain nonsense than make another Tomb Raider, and Embracer nabbed itself a bargain.
Thankfully, the change of ownership didn’t alter the deal that CD had in place with Xbox, and the development partnership has continued, which brings us to today’s update.
As spotted by VGC, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos CEO Phil Rogers took the mic to update shareholders on what the studio was working on.
“We’re working on the iconic Perfect Dark game and the project is going extremely well,” Rogers said today (per VGC’s transcription).
“What’s been so promising internally is seeing how our team took on this opportunity, a new way of working,” he continued. “If we think about the future of how we work, collaboration across studios, across timezones, across geographies, across different companies, will all become more common, so it’s great to see the team at The Initiative and our team across Crystal studios working so well together.”
Rogers’ comments are similar to those from Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty. During his PAX West panel in September, Booty insisted all was well at The Initiative.
“So, we just did this big partnership with Crystal Dynamics, and I read online, ‘oh, this must mean there’s a problem or something’ – it’s quite the opposite, right?” Booty said at the time.“You’ve got this veteran team at Crystal Dynamics, a big AAA team with over 100 people that becomes available. Of course we want to work with them, particularly if they’ve made a game like that before.
“And that kind of co-development, when you’re working out with people like Certain Affinity, Iron Galaxy, Blackbird, all those studios are so key to the products that we make.”
So there you go. One big happy family, it seems.
Elsewhere, things continue to bubble along well for Crystal Dynamics. Its Guardians of the Galaxy game hit its 8 million player milestone thanks to its inclusion on Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. The next game in the Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider franchise remains in early development and is being created in Unreal Engine 5.
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