According to Crystal Dynamics, co-development work on the Xbox Perfect Dark revival is going “very well.”

That’s according to Phil Rogers, CEO of Crystal Dynamics and Eidos, who gave an update on the project on Thursday during the earnings call for parent firm Embracer Group.

Perfect Dark, the first title from Microsoft’s new internal company The Initiative, was co-developed by Xbox and Crystal Dynamics, it was unveiled in September 2021.

Today, Rogers remarked, “We’re working on the renowned Perfect Dark game, and the project is doing incredibly well (transcribed by VGC).

 

Internally, the way our team embraced this chance and new method of working has been really encouraging. It is wonderful to see the team at The Initiative and our team throughout Crystal studios collaborating so effectively together because, if we think about how we operate in the future, collaboration across studios, across time zones, across continents, and across various firms will all become more prevalent.

He echoes Xbox Game Studios CEO Matt Booty, who declared in September that the era of solitary studios creating expansive video games is “far gone.”

“So, we just did this big deal with Crystal Dynamics, and I read online, ‘oh, this must mean there’s an issue or something,’ – it’s quite the contrary, right?” asked Booty during a Q&A session at PAX West.

“A large AAA team at Crystal Dynamics with over 100 members becomes available, and they are a seasoned team. Naturally, we want to collaborate with them, especially if they have experience creating similar games.

“And in that way, we’ve accomplished a great deal of work. Consider the Age of Empires 4 video game, which was developed in collaboration with Relic Studios in Vancouver and just released last October. Even with games like Flight Simulator, we collaborated with the French studio Asobo.

And that kind of collaborative development is crucial to the goods we produce when working with studios like Certain Affinity (Halo), Iron Galaxy (Killer Instinct), and Blackbird (Minecraft Legends).

“But that also adds some complexity, as it affects the timeline if one of those studios experiences issues.

The days of saying, “Everyone, round up the team in the cafeteria, I want to tell everyone to work harder on Wednesday,” are long gone. That is no longer the case; things are now much more difficult.

In March, VGC stated that Perfect Dark was having problems and that The Initiative had had a “fast and furious” wave of senior departures the previous year.

Over the course of a year, up to half of the main development team believed to be working on the reboot left the firm, giving Crystal Dynamics a bigger role in the game.

The Initiative’s management expressed confidence in the team it had assembled and the new talent that had joined at the time to VGC, pointing to industry-wide staffing issues during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The wave of departures, according to senior current and former Initiative developers VGC spoke to, was brought on by dissatisfaction with the project’s direction, which was set by game director Daniel Neuburger, who previously held the same position at the Tomb Raider studio and left Xbox earlier this year, and studio head Darrell Gallagher, who also formerly ran Crystal Dynamics.

Rogers also gave updates on a number of other projects being worked on by Crystal Dynamics and Eidos during the earnings call on Thursday.

In April, Crystal Dynamics announced that Unreal Engine 5 was being used in the creation of the upcoming Tomb Raider game.

We can truly push narrative to new levels because to our collaboration with Epic Games and the incorporation of Unreal Engine 5 into our development tool chain, according to Rogers. Although we haven’t yet disclosed any information regarding our franchise intentions, the team is eager to lay out our future as soon as possible in 2019.

He added that the Guardians of the Galaxy video game released by Eidos Montreal last year had reached a new player milestone.

“We recently celebrated the first anniversary of our acclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy game, and as a result, we surpassed the eight million player mark. With this game recently being added to Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, we’ve seen fantastic engagement from gamers.

Rogers continued, “I’ve really just returned from a few days in Montreal. The team is really proud of the game they created, and they are also very excited about how we will promote it commercially within our own business unit.

A new Deus Ex game is reportedly in the very early stages of production at Eidos Montreal, while the firm is also working on a new IP and cooperating with Microsoft on Xbox games like Fable.

Stay tuned for next year when we plan to return and tell you more about the games that we’re working on at Eidos, said Rogers. “We’re not actually sharing anything here,” he added.

Finally, the executive said that a recent survey conducted by Crystal Dynamics to determine interest in a potential relaunch of its long-dormant Legacy of Kain franchise garnered a resoundingly positive answer.