But Blackbird’s cancellation was particularly shocking because it had blown away executives at Xbox just a few months ago. 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.
Despite some technological hiccups and a lengthy development cycle, the game appeared to be making good progress. Employees were stunned to see it get caught up in the bloodbath.
ZeniMax Online Studios was founded in 2007 to develop The Elder Scrolls Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in the popular fantasy franchise that spawned Skyrim. After a rocky launch in 2014, The Elder Scrolls Online received several updates and went on to bring in millions of players while transforming into one of the publisher’s most lucrative games, bringing in $2 billion in revenue by 2024.
In 2018, the company began building a team for its next project, which it gave the code name Kestrel. (Later, the team switched the code name to Blackbird because they liked Kestrel so much, they wanted to use it as the actual name.)
The game faced some early technical challenges and was put on the backburner because of the ongoing success of The Elder Scrolls Online, which vacuumed up most of the studio’s resources. But in recent years, Blackbird’s progress had sped up. The team expanded to 300 people, delivered the impressive vertical slice in March and was aiming to release in 2028.
Blackbird was a third-person, online looter-shooter, not unlike the popular game Destiny, set within a new franchise. It had a sci-fi, noir aesthetic — similar to films like Blade Runner — and placed a heavy emphasis on vertical movement. Players could uses abilities such as double jumping, air-dashing, a grappling hook and wall climbing to fling themselves around tall buildings like superheroes.
I saw footage of the vertical slice last night and was impressed. It was a slick-looking demo with alluring visuals and battle sequences.
Xbox executives were also blown away when they played Blackbird in March, according to people familiar with the game’s development. Executives had nothing but complimentary words for the project.
Following that March meeting, the team began putting together a production plan that would flesh out the vertical slice and then build out more content for release.
Then, yesterday, the game was canceled, stunning everyone at the studio. Matt Firor, the well-respected studio boss and director who founded ZeniMax Online Studios and led The Elder Scrolls Online, immediately tendered his resignation.
Staff were not given an explanation for Blackbird’s cancellation. It was set to be an expensive project, and Xbox may have seen it as too risky. It was a new franchise and a live-service game entering an oversaturated market during a time when many other live-service titles have flopped. The team was also building a brand-new engine for the game while making it, which created a number of challenges. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to elaborate on why it was canceled.
But ZeniMax Online Studios was not an unproven developer. It was the maker of one of the most lucrative online games in history, a title that generates significant profits every quarter.
Canceled video games are easy to glamorize. They will always exist in a crystallized state, preserved in our imaginations without any of the flaws or controversies that inevitably arrive upon release. But for people who saw and played Blackbird, this one stung.
Microsoft's Xbox Cancels Blackbird, an Upcoming Game That Impressed Executives - Bloomberg
So it was paused after a shaky start and they went back to TESO but upon returning development was starting to go more smooth, so that apparent "7 years in development" may not have even been 7 years since they paused in the middle of it. If it's aiming to release in 2028 then it would have been 10 years as I predicted but again, that is including the pause so technically it would have been less than 10 years.
- It was receiving praise from everyone that saw it and played it.
- It comes from a studio that has given Bethesda $2bn in revenue in 10 years.
- It comes from a studio that generates significant profits every quarter.
It was clearly cancelled for greed reasons and nothing more. They just want them on the guaranteed profit maker The Elder Scrolls Online and don't want them trying anything new because they need to save that money for AI.
