The two former project leads for the now-canceled Perfect Dark reboot have set up a new studio under the auspices of publisher 2K, it’s been revealed.
According to Jason Schreier over on Bluesky, former The Initiative studio head Darrell Gallagher and Perfect Dark director Brian Horton have started a new development company, and it’ll be a subsidiary of 2K (itself a publishing label for parent company Take-Two).
Speaking to IGN, a 2K spokesperson said the company is “thrilled” to welcome Gallagher and Horton to its ranks, and that, while it doesn’t have any additional information to share now, it looks forward to sharing more about the new studio “in the future”.
In case you need a reminder, Xbox’s Perfect Dark reboot was canceled earlier this year, and its developer The Initiative was shut down into the bargain.
The game’s cancellation and the studio’s shutdown were part of a larger wave of layoffs at Microsoft, with around 9,000 employees losing their jobs, including staffers at subsidiaries like Candy Crush Saga‘s King and Bethesda’s parent ZeniMax.
Legendary studio Rare was also among the companies hit by the wave of layoffs, and the long-in-development Everwild was canceled as well, seemingly leaving Rare with no games currently in the works (although the studio is still supporting multiplayer pirate adventure Sea of Thieves).
Of course, the sweeping wave of Microsoft layoffs didn’t stop Xbox reporting a revenue increase back in late July, and it also doesn’t appear to have stopped the company seemingly expecting its studios to hit ridiculously high profit margins (which might explain some of the staff cuts).
Earlier this year, Schreier reported that Take-Two was close to saving Perfect Dark from its ignominious demise, but that the deal fell through; Gallagher and Horton’s new studio under 2K makes a lot of sense when examined through that lens.
We’ll have to wait and see what the two are cooking up with their new studio, and whether it’ll bear any resemblance to Perfect Dark at all. Stay tuned for more.
