Microsoft has recently made major layoffs and canceled multiple major titles. Today it was revealed that the exclusive game "Contraband" created by the developer of "Just Cause" has also been cancelled. In fact, there have been signs of cancellation of this game for a long time. At the beginning of last month, sharp-eyed players discovered that Xbox deleted the trailer of "Contraband" from the official YouTube channel for no reason.
Interestingly, three of the five first-party games announced at the 2020 Xbox June conference have been cancelled:
"Fable: Rebooted Edition"
"State of Decay 3"
"Contraband" (cancelled)
"Everwild" (cancelled)
Perfect Dark: Rebooted (Cancelled)
Although the four games displayed at the press conference that year, "Halo: Infinite", "Forza Motorsport", "Oath" and "Hellblade 2", have all been released, none of them caused much splash. In fact, these four games performed poorly. After the release of "Forza Motorsport", developer Turn 10 was also affected by this year's major layoffs and basically became an auxiliary studio, while 343 and "Halo" recently underwent complete rebranding, and "Hellblade 2" has worrying statistics on platforms such as Steam. All in all, Microsoft's explosive 2020 reveal didn't seem to live up to expectations.
The cancellation of three major games in a row, and the disappointing launch of four, likely means that Microsoft's leadership is no longer confident about future exclusive games. Game Pass's stagnant growth over the past few years likely also contributed to the situation.