Xbox has abandoned its long-in-development game Contraband, citing an evaluation of the project’s future amid four years of radio silence since its initial E3 announcement in 2021.
Contraband was announced as a cooperative third-person shooter set in a 1970s smuggler’s paradise called Bayan and had garnered significant excitement from the gaming community. However, following a series of internal conflicts within Avalanche Studios Group, which led to the formation of an official union club, development on the game appears to have stalled.
The news comes as Xbox continues to restructure its team, having eliminated 9,100 jobs in a mass layoff last month, including hundreds in gaming. This follows other canceled projects such as Everwild and Perfect Dark.
Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-stops-development-on-contraband-four-years-after-initial-e3-announcement