Recently, Klobrille, a well-known whistleblower, found that Dan Neuburger, creative director of Microsoft's first-party studio The Initiative, left in February this year. The former Crystal Dynamics studio veteran served as co-game director for Tomb Raider and Rise of The Tomb Raider, and has led the development of reboots for the FPS masterpiece Perfect Darkness for the past three and a half years.
It is also understood that this is also the second senior developer to leave The Initiative Studio in the past 12 months. In February 2021, Drew Murray, design director of Perfect Darkness, announced that he would leave The Initiative studio for personal reasons and return to his old club Insomniac Games shortly thereafter.
After the two of them left, The Initiative still has a strong development team. In addition to Darrell Gallagher, former Activision Blizzard development manager and former Crystal Power Studio manager who led the studio, God of War level designer Chris O'Neill, Tomb Raider Rises god of war senior producer Brian Westergaard, Titan Fall 2, Apex Heroes senior game designer Sean Slayback, and others are responsible for key positions in The Initiative's development team.
Since Perfect Darkness was released in November 2020, there hasn't been much development-related intelligence, with the biggest news being the announcement that Crystal Power Studios will assist in the development. Given that the leaders and developers of the two teams overlapped to a considerable extent at different times, this collaboration also makes sense.
Klobrille, a well-known Xbox fan and whistleblower who discovered the departure, also said that since its inception in 2018, Microsoft has set a goal for The Initiative Studio to "remain lightweight and flexible", so as a 3A studio, The Initiative is not large, only about 60 people. The departure of the senior designers may mean that the concept creation, prototyping, and pre-development phases of the "All-Star" development team have been completed, and the more manned and experienced Crystal Power Studio will take over Perfect Darkness to a greater extent and do its best to complete the game development in 2023.
Jeff Grubb, a well-known journalist, recently said in his own podcast that Microsoft may release a live demonstration of "Perfect Darkness" at this year's E3 exhibition, when we will know the true face of this highly watched new work.