Perfect Dark: Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty updates on the team's condition

A new Perfect Dark game was announced in December 2020, but since then developer The Initiative has gone through a turbulent period during which the studio lost many of its senior members. Since then, the developer has slowly regained its strength, while also having to face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic: this is what Xbox Studios chief Matt Booty has explained in a recent episode of Friends Per Second.

"I think one of the hardest things in the last few years was producing a big game of the scale of Halo or Battlefield under the conditions we found ourselves in. The second hardest thing was starting a new studio," Booty said, explaining how The Initiative had to find many new employees.

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Booty resumed stating, "The second is starting a new firm. You don't have a shared history, you don't have people who have worked together for five or 10 years. We were doing a lot of experiments with remote and hybrid locations, and how to attract talent, some worked, and some didn't. It wasn't so much the leadership changes as it was the work of building a firm. It's a brand new firm."

Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics (acquired by Embracer Group, remember) is also collaborating on Perfect Dark together with The Initiative, and Booty describes the collaboration as a co-development and not work assigned to a completely separate external team.

"They are equal partners in development," Booty said, talking about how collaborations like this could become more common in the future. "This is not a case of Crystal Dynamics taking over or replacing [The Initiative]. We've had a hundred people available who have a great pedigree of working with Tomb Raider. They are available, they are excited to work on Perfect Dark. It's a part of how you build a game team these days, not a sign that we're trying to compensate for something."