Perfect Dark Done

Even More Rare

The financial failing of the Xbox have been obvious to anyone willing to look, and the ultimate effect of that has been the loss of many jobs at Microsoft. And with losses to jobs comes losses to project losses, and with that we have Perfect Dark. It’s one of the mysteries in videogames that Perfect Dark, a seminal title, has nothing to show for it’s impact but a meagre two follow-ups: a unique but (by nature) scaled back Gameboy Colour spin-off and an underwhelming prequel on Xbox. Joanna Dark has been all but faded to black and out of the videogames landscape. Then came the reboot of the series with the Initiative, Xbox’s in-house developer, and a title that had some genuine interest and even optimism when a (now somewhat suspect) segment of gameplay was revealed not too long ago. Now that reboot is cancelled, deader than a mouse in a rattrap factory. As for the Initiative, the ambitious super-team of developers is also passed, doors closed and years of troubled work wasted.

If that wasn’t enough bad news, the fabled Everwild title that Rare was working on, a troubled title itself, has also been cancelled. Just what Microsoft does going forward is hard to predict. There was a time where it seemed an obvious strategy: buy developers and have them make exclusives for Xbox, then that became for Gamepass. Now those games aren’t exclusive and the money spent on talent looks to have come up short in many places.

Playing videogames, writing about videogames, considering videogames—that about sums it up. Videogames are the one hobby that I’ve kept since I was only little, zapping ducks on the NES or knocking out MR. X. And when I’m not enjoying classics from the bit generation of games or checking out those earliest of polygons, I’m probably playing something from today’s age of modern gaming: if I’m not complaining about it. Something I’m doing at the moment? Taking the Nintendo Switch 2 for a spin.