Yet another Xbox game has been put on the chopping block, as it has been announced that development on Contraband has been canceled. The news comes a little more than four years after the game was first announced at E3 2021. The game, which was being developed by Avalanche Studios (the same studio behind the Just Cause franchise), has been officially canned, according to a report from Bloomberg.
This is an unfortunate end to a game that players were excited about when it was first announced. The news was first broken on Bluesky by journalist Jason Schreier, who stated that sources told Bloomberg that “Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence”. An official confirmation from Avalanche Studios on its website stated that “Active development has now stopped while we evaluate the project’s future”.
Contraband Will No Longer Be Developed
The announcement went on to thank the community for its excitement and promised an update on what’s next for the project as soon as possible. However, the Bloomberg report is pretty clear that the game is completely canceled. When it was announced at E3 2021, a teaser trailer was shown for Contraband, revealing a 1970s smuggler’s paradise called Bayan.
The announcement, however, didn’t include any gameplay, and since then, we haven’t seen anything further about the game’s development. In 2022, there was a reported clash between the studio’s management and employees over a controversial hire, which led to the studio forming an official union club. This is just another unfortunate part of this game’s development history.
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The cancellation of Contraband is part of a larger trend for Xbox, which has been canceling projects left and right after a mass layoff of 9,100 jobs Microsoft-wide. This included hundreds of jobs in gaming. After the layoffs, we learned that games like Everwild and Perfect Dark had also been canceled. It seems that Xbox is tightening its belt and cutting its losses on projects that may not be working out.
This is a pretty awful trend for Xbox fans, as there have been a number of Xbox-exclusive projects that have been canceled in the last few years. It’s almost becoming a meme in the gaming community, and it’s unfortunate for those who were excited about the games that were being developed.
Xbox Has to Readjust Soon or Lose Many Players
While the layoffs were unfortunate, I can understand a company wanting to re-evaluate its projects. What I don’t understand, however, is the lack of communication from Xbox about these projects. We got a teaser trailer for Contraband and then four years of radio silence. This is not the first time this has happened, and it’s a trend that needs to stop.
When you announce a game, you get people excited about it. When you then go four years without saying anything, you leave people in the dark, and it just leads to a lot of speculation and disappointment. It’s almost better to not announce the game at all than to announce it and then just let it fade into nothing. I honestly think this is a bigger problem than the cancelation itself.
It’s a sign that Xbox is having a hard time getting its games to market, and it’s something that needs to be addressed. It’s awful for the fans, and it’s even worse for the developers who put in so much time and effort into these projects.
Source: Avalanche, Jason Schreier
