Contraband is No Longer in Active Development, Kojima's OD Still in Development - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 07 August 2025 / 5,442 Views
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has reported Xbox has cancelled Avalanche Studios' Contraband.
Contraband was announced four years ago in June 2021 and nothing official has been heard about the game since then.
"Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News," said Schreier. "This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox canceled several other big titles."
Microsoft spokesperson told Schreier that OD from Hideo Kojima is still in development.
"OD, the collaboration between Xbox and Hideo Kojima, is still in development, a Microsoft spokesperson tells me," said Schreier.
BREAKING: Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News. This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox canceled several other big titles.
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Avalanche has posted an update on their website.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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I'm surprised it wasn't part of the initial wave of cancellations. Over 4 years of complete silence and the only "leaks" we ever got was that it was in development hill with multiple reboots. What a terrible amount of time wasted.
I'm not to surprised honestly. One of the top leakers who announced Xbox going multiplat and their OEM devices with Asus said there is more layoffs coming and more games being canceled. He said MS is slowly doing this until they eventually just end up with all their top gamesfranchises.
Add it to the list, so sweepstakes on Fable cancellation?
I would have said there is no way Fable will be cancelled. Now I'm not so sure.
I'm shocked it wasn't cancelled already. A game in development since 2017, not currently on the release schedule for 2026, meaning it will have 10 years in development at the very least, and at a very high AAA budget. One would think that a project like that would light up in neon on Amy Hood's spreadsheets when looking for things to cancel.
Maybe they finally got it moving in a direction they think looks promising.
Completely forgot about this game, not surprised.
It kinda feels like MS didn't have enough oversight for all these projects and a bunch of teams were just cruising on the MS dime without really doing much.
I think that was kind of true throughout the industry over the last several years. Covid gave a big kick to the industry, and low interest rates meant money was easy to come by. So, companies were throwing cash that anyone with a half decent pitch.
Not even knowing what we missed. What was this game even about?
You know Xbox, if you'd gotten video games out during the peak of the 'PS5 has no games' period, you'd probably have had a good shot this gen.
Wouldn't surprise me to see OD cut as well.
OD should be fine considering its not supposed to be a live service game.. im expecting fable to be cancelled the combat gameplay didn't look promising
