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Scalebound (Canceled)

Scalebound, a once-exciting action-RPG from Hideki Kamiya and Platinum Games, is likely Xbox’s most famous cancellation at this point. The glimpses we got of it showed off a headphone-wearing punk with a dragon arm, traditional fantasy weapons, and a ginormous dragon companion. Reportedly, the game never quite came together and the only available footage of it is admittedly rough (and early!) but the pedigree behind the game makes me think the team could’ve figured it out with enough time. The developers attached to the project are always expressing interest in reviving Scalebound, so this cancellation may not have been the end of the project as we know it. Stranger things have happened.

Perfect Dark (Canceled)

Perfect Dark is one of Xbox’s most recent cancellations, and it still stings. Announced nearly five years ago, this reboot of the iconic first-person shooter series first developed by Rare looked exceptional in its one and only gameplay showcase. Its blend of tight first-person shooting and parkour, as well as immersive-sim-like levels and stealth mechanics, showed a lot of promise. Unfortunately, the game’s prolonged and troubled development (which eventually brought in Crystal Dynamics as a co-developer) put it and the leading team at The Initiative on the chopping block. Unfortunately, following Microsoft’s most recent layoffs, The Initiative has been shut down and Perfect Dark has been put on ice again.

Everwild (Canceled)

Rare has spent much of the past decade working on Xbox’s hit live-service pirate game Sea of Thieves, but it also spent a great deal of that time working on Everwild. We never got a real glimpse of this cooperative action-adventure game outside of a pair of trailers early on, but they communicated a lot in a short window of time. The game seemed to follow a group of wanderers that appeared to serve as caretakers for the environment and the creatures that inhabited it. Reportedly, Everwild featured no combat and, throughout its various incarnations, toyed with elements of survival and god games before being canceled as part of Microsoft’s July 2025 layoffs.

Zenimax MMO aka Blackbird (Canceled)

Of the recent cancellations at Xbox, ZeniMax Online Studio’s MMO, internally known as Blackbird, is the one we know the least about. All we really know is that it was a sci-fi MMO that had been in development since about 2018 and that production was going smoothly until the team was suddenly cut amidst wider layoffs at Microsoft in July 2025. The title had apparently been scaling up in production with some of the heads at Xbox, like Phil Spencer, having played it fairly recently, making the cancellation all the more frustrating. Reportedly, many of the resources that were set to go to Blackbird and ZeniMax Online have now been shifted over to Fallout 5 at Bethesda and assuring the upcoming RPG goes into production as soon as possible.

Stormlands (Canceled)

Before it was owned by Microsoft and putting out several hits for the publisher, Obsidian Entertainment was making another ambitious RPG meant to be an Xbox One launch title. The now-axed game Stormlands was one of many Obsidian projects that never saw the light of day, but this one was much different due to its scope. The game was supposed to be akin to an MMO, but on the same kind of scale as say, Destiny’s shared destinations, where players are invisibly matchmade with one another. That shared world was supposed to make it possible for, among other things, players to join one another in hypothetical 40-player raids that would naturally occur. Obsidian faced many hurdles with the project though, which was ultimately canceled before it was even announced.

Fable Legends (Canceled)

Unlike many other games on this list, Fable Legends was, for lack of a better term, real and was the last installment before Playground Games’ upcoming reboot of the series. This co-op centric, live-service take on Fable had launch windows attached to it, faced delays, and was shown off at multiple shows over the years. There was even a beta, meaning that a limited number of players outside of the studio actually managed to play and invest money in it (which was returned) and it seemed on track for release in 2016 before the game was unceremoniously culled by Microsoft and the game’s developer, Lionhead Studios, was shut down completely.

Phantom Dust Remake (Canceled)

The name Phantom Dust might not ring a bell for many, but for a few sickos out there, it is everything. The original Phantom Dust was a fascinating mash-up of genres, blending high-flying and stylish action with the complexity and depth of a deckbuilder long before the latter genre came to be en vogue. Cue the chorus of “Phantom Dust was ahead of its time.” Well at the onset of the Xbox One era, Microsoft promised a remake of the title, but it never came to fruition. Xbox eventually terminated its relationship with the developer, shuttering the studio, and released a remaster of the game, but hope still remains for a full-scale reboot.

Fallout 5 (Still in the works)

There really isn’t much to say about Fallout 5 just yet because all signs point to it only just beginning full-scale production recently. Bethesda’s director and studio head Todd Howard has openly spoken about Fallout 5 a few times, especially surrounding the release of Amazon’s TV adaptation of the series, and has more or less confirmed that it will happen, just not any time soon. While it’s still likely a ways out, signs point to renewed efforts at Xbox to kickstart a bunch of Fallout projects, including development on the next mainline installment.

The Elder Scrolls VI (Still in the works)

The last time we heard anything concrete about The Elder Scrolls VI, which was first announced in 2018, it was news that the game was playable, which is a tantalizing bit of info after a long stretch of no news, and also, in and of itself, next to nothing.That’s about as much as we’ve heard from Bethesda and Todd Howard though, since the team appears to be heads down in production on the long-awaited follow up to 2011’s de facto Game of the Year, Skyrim.

Project Mara (Still in the works)

Ninja Theory’s Project Mara is presumably still in development, though there’s been very little talk of the game outside of its announcement, which at the time, seemed more focused on the studio’s tech than the title itself. Still, in this industry, no news is sometimes good news, and with Hellblade II mostly behind the team now, it’s more likely than ever that more developers are working on Project Mara. Here’s hoping it materializes sooner rather than later.

OD (Still in the works)

Hideo Kojima is just coming off of the launch of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, but that doesn’t mean the people have forgotten about his upcoming return to horror with OD. The Microsoft-published game has tons of star power, including Hunter Schafer and Jordan Peele, but has hit some snags in recent years due to the actor’s strike and Kojima Productions’ commitment to other projects. Maybe now that both of these roadblocks have been cleared for the foreseeable future, we’ll begin hearing and seeing a lot more from OD, which Kojima has touted as a project that blurs the line between film and video games.

Contraband (Still in the works)

Avalanche has been awfully quiet about its upcoming open-world co-op heist game Contraband since it was first announced in 2021. Despite how ominous that absence of news looks and sounds, the studio is still hiring for the project, which at least signals that it’s in active development. Hopefully we hear about this game sooner rather than later, and that when we do, it’s with a spot of good news for a change.

The Last Night (Still in the works)

Ever since its debut, The Last Night has been plagued by controversy and delays that have made it essentially vaporware. First announced at Xbox’s 2017 E3 show, The Last Night’s trailer dazzled audiences with its cyberpunk setting, pixelated graphics, and cinematic influences. Unfortunately, not only has the game never manifested, but its director has become a lightning rod for controversy following the resurfacing of old posts on Twitter/X which decried feminism and espoused pro-GamerGate sentiments, which he later walked back. Since these early showings, The Last Night has essentially disappeared from the public eye.

Replaced (Still in the works)

Speaking of cinematic cyberpunk platformers with pixel graphics, Replaced is a very similar-looking game that was announced back at Xbox’s 2021 showcase. Developed by Sad Cat Studios, this third-party game has been promoted by Xbox a few times now as a console exclusive, and re-emerged a year later with a second trailer and tentative 2023 launch window. Outside of that, we’ve seen some gameplay, but Replaced keeps eluding us despite these constant showings and stretches of quiet. But hey–that’s more consistency than some other games on this list are managing.

Ion (Canceled)

After departing from Bohemia Interactive and DayZ, Dean Hall started up his own studio, RocketWerkz, and began work on the team’s first game, Ion. Made in conjunction with a studio called Improbable, the sci-fi space survival game was interested in seemingly simulating a living universe. If the thing sounds ambitious and too big to happen, you’d be right. Years after its announcement at E3 2015, the game was canceled, with Hall’s team moving onto other projects and Improbable announcing that it wouldn’t continue development without RocketWerkz’s collaboration.

Way to the Woods (Still in the works)

Back in 2019, Xbox showed off Way to the Woods, an adventure game where you play as a deer guiding her fawn through the ruins of a cozy-looking apocalypse. The game is made by a sole developer, Anthony Tan, and features a soundtrack composed by Aivi and Surasshu, a duo who previously scored the Cartoon Network hit Steven Universe. News of the game has been scarce since this 2019 trailer, but Tan was profiled by The New York Times in 2024 and confirmed that the game was still in development, so it’s still simply a matter of time.

Project Knoxville (Canceled)

Press Play is likely a studio that many haven’t thought about for a long time, but the now-defunct Xbox team once put out a steady stream of smaller games like Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Kalimba. Before the team was wound down, it had a number of projects in the works, including two projects that were later spun off to become Trailmakers and Deep Rock Galactic, but the last of its games, a co-op survival title called Project Knoxville, unfortunately went down with the ship.

New IP from The Coalition (TBD)

One name change ago, The Coalition (then known as Black Tusk Studios) was reportedly charged with the creation of a new key franchise for Microsoft at the beginning of the Xbox One generation. This responsibility landed in Black Tusk’s laps after the cancellation of a number of projects, including a pair of Kinect titles: a shooter and an interactive children’s TV game. Despite the announcement of this new series, nothing ever came of the news, with the studio eventually being renamed The Coalition and moved onto the Gears of War franchise, where it has remained all these years. There was never any news of a cancellation though, so there’s no telling if The Coalition is still working on this property in the background or not.