Things aren’t looking too hot for Avalanche Studios andXbox’sContraband, as its reveal trailer has been delisted on Xbox’s officialYouTubepage.
Despite havingone of its best years in recent memory with tons of great games, Xbox just pushed all of that momentum out the window. Yesterday,Microsoft announced that it was making more than 9,000 cuts across the company, with many of them coming from Xbox’s gaming divisions.
As if the astounding number of layoffs wasn’t bad enough, it’s also been confirmed thatmultiple upcoming games from Xbox have been cancelled. So far,we know that Everwild, Perfect Dark, andJohn Romero’s next game have all been cancelled, but there’s a good chance more are on the way.
Contraband Hasn’t Been Seen In 4 Years, And There’s A Chance That’s Going To Be Permanent
Xbox Has Randomly Erased The Announcement From Its YouTube Channel
As pointed out by Twitter user oliver_drk, Xbox has recently made the official announcement trailer for Contraband private on its YouTube channel. The original trailer released four years ago and was more a vibe-based proof of concept than anything else, with no gameplay footage or story beats.
For whatever reason, the Contraband trailer can no longer be found on Xbox’s channel. Strangely,Contraband hasn’t been reported as one of the games cancelled due to the layoffs, so it could be for another reason altogether. Either way, things aren’t really looking good for it right now.
Over on Reddit,one person suggested that it could be due to the license for the trailer’s music expiring. That seems like wishful thinking, though.
Avalanche Studios hasn’t commented on the recent Xbox layoff, so it’s not clear if it’s affected at all, but that doesn’t stop the fact that we barely know anything about Contraband. Over the past four years, we’ve seen nothing more of it than the reveal trailer, so the project has always seemed like it was in a weird place.
We’ll know for sure soon whether Contraband is still going or not, but for now, it might be worth holding off on getting excited for its grand return. I hope to god that we’re wrong and that something else is behind the trailer being made private.
