Another Xbox Game Studios game has been canceled. Contraband, the cooperative open-world heist game that was made in collaboration with Avalanche Studios, been given the axe.

Xbox’s Contraband has been canceled

In a statement from Avalanche Studios, the developer said it is no longer actively developing Contraband and will “evaluate the project’s future.”

“Over the past several years, Avalanche Studios Group and Xbox Game Studios Publishing have collaborated on Contraband,” reads the statement. “Active development has now stopped while we evaluate the project’s future. We’re thankful for the excitement we’ve seen from the community since we announced and will give an update on what’s next as soon as we can.”

This is not the first project from Xbox to get recently canceled. Other projects that have been in development for a long time, including Rare’s Everwild and The Initiative’s Perfect Dark, have also been canceled. The Initiative was just one of several Xbox Game Studios developers impacted by layoffs this year when it was shuttered. Studios like Rare, Raven Software, Turn 10, Sledgehammer Games, and more have been affected by cuts at Microsoft this year.

It would not have been a stretch for Xbox to release Contraband on PS5. Considering it was a cooperative experience, it would have benefited from a wider player base, similar to other co-op experiences the company has brought to PlayStation platforms, such as Grounded and Sea of Thieves. Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know.

In terms of Xbox games that are actually releasing on PS5, one is coming very soon, and it’s a big one. Gears of War: Reloaded, a remaster of the first entry of the beloved third-person cover shooter, will release for PS5 on August 26. On the flip side, PlayStation is releasing its critically acclaimed cooperative shooter Helldivers 2 on the same day.

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