Then we have to ask: how did Xbox Game Studios herald The Initiative as an elite team developing the game?

The Initiative existed by E3 2018, so it’s been around for four and a half years. We heard at The Game Awards 2020 that they’re working on a Perfect Dark reboot. Since then, Crystal Dynamics is officially helping them develop it (and they’ll have the capacity to do so, as we reported the other day that they’re shutting down development on Marvel’s Avengers), but that doesn’t mean we’ll have a Perfect Dark reboot in our hands this year.

Even though two studios are already working on reviving Perfect Dark, Miller Ross (who had several insider scoops on Marvel’s Avengers) wrote on the ResetEra forums that Crystal Dynamics is working full steam ahead on the new Tomb Raider, which will be powered by Unreal Engine 5. There have been one or two bumps during Perfect Dark’s development, and that’s why he says Tomb Raider will be released at least a year earlier than the Perfect Dark reboot! Tomb Raider was in development for quite some time. Still, they eventually had to restart development after the in-house Foundation engine (used in Rise of the Tomb Raider, then Eidos Montréal could develop it further for Shadow of the Tomb Raider) was replaced with Epic Games’ technology.

Amazon also has a stake in Tomb Raider: we heard in December that Amazon Games would be the publisher of the game (so Lara Croft’s return might be published on their cloud service, Amazon Luna) rather than the plethora of publishing houses under the Embracer Group (e.g., Plaion, THQ Nordic…).

But at least we hear more about this game than Perfect Dark! It also sounds like a game that is struggling to get off the ground (the same can be said for the more modern versions of GoldenEye 007, which Rare was originally behind).

Source: WCCFTech