Take-Two was Reportedly in Talks to Save the Cancelled Perfect Dark Game Before Talks Collapsed - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 September 2025 / 5,036 Views
Publisher Take-Two Interactive was reportedly in talks to fund and publish the now cancelled Perfect Dark game, however, negotiations fell through. This is according multiple sources that spoke to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.
The deal would have seen Take-Two purchase the game from rights owner Xbox. However, talks would fall through because the companies were unable to figure out long-term ownership over the Perfect Dark IP.
Crystal Dynamics, the co-developer on the game, has been forced to lay off staff and abandon development on Perfect Dark.
Representatives for Embracer, Xbox, and Take-Two all declined to comment.
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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The Perfect Dark IP was like 50% of the reason Microsoft bought Rare all those years ago - yet they have done next to nothing with it since then. Pretty sad...
The best thing they've done with the IP is a couple of spin-off books set around PD Zero. lol
Yeah it's tragic. Only one of the most iconic classic fps's and theyve destroyed the ip
Microsoft basically paid $350 million for a barn in the English countryside.
They tried and failed with PD Zero and now the Reboot.
Microsoft buying Rare was my personal 9/11.
This isn't about Rare lol
Guess how they acquired the Perfect Dark IP 🤷🏼♀️
Perfect Dark Reboot has nothing to do with Rare.
What an absolute example of mismanagement of one of the founding pillars of modern first person shooters on console.
MS couldn't afford it? Guess they are hard up.
Sounds like an excuse made by Satya "AI is better than actual human beings, hurr!!" Nadella.
Nintendo needs to buy back Rare
Nintendo making a new Banjo, Perfect Dark or Donkey Kong with Rare behind it would be great. Sadly, knowing Microsoft, they're more likely to just shut the studio down than sell it off
Rare feels more at home on Nintendo. Their art style and gameplay scream Nintendo to me, not Xbox which is more about hyper-realistic games emulating real life. The Microsoft buyout never should never have happened—what a disaster for the industry.
Xbox and Microsoft being dumb idiots as always,
Should've just gave it to take two who are actually competent to tackle a massive task
Eh. How many times has a twenty-five-year-old franchise been brought back to life and lived up the original? Ever? It almost always falls short, or misses the mark entirely and sucks. Same with TV shows, same with movies. Imo, it's best to let things like this die. We have the original to play for the rest of our lives. That's enough.
Do we count Donkey Kong Bananza as a sequel to 64?
In MY opinion? They're about as related as RE1 and RE7. Same IP. That's about it.
Agreed, most reboots are middling or bad. It still amazes me how bad Battletoads was. It's just modern slop.
The people complaining just want to whine about MS. Or it's the people under the illusion all reboots are great.
Somehow, I completely forgot the modern Country games when typing my comment.
Baldur’s Gate
We need to accept... western developers in this era are incompetent. It wasn't going to be the game anybody wanted.
I also assume MS just did a tax write off. So it's not a complete loss when these trash projects disappear.
Larian is western, Sandfall Interactive is western, Hazelight Studios is western, ArrowHead is western, team PEAK is western and yes Santa Monica, Obsidian, Insomniac, ID, MachineGames, Avalanche, etc are western too, just like that there are many more examples. I separated the list in two because the second part are great studios that people (western people mostly LOL) who believe in the whole "the west ..." are never going to give credit to.
Bad management and games that aren't for your don't decrease the level of talent that is working in those studios.
My guy, several of those studios have been pumping out slop or underwhelming games. I mean some them haven't really made a good game this gen. And that's my point.
Halo Infinite, an underwhelming FPS, is at par with many games from those studios. That's how low the bar currently is.
Blame whoever you want. I have little faith in current studios to handle classic IP. Unless it's a small, niche studio.
i think you mean “leadership in U.S. gaming are incompetent.” Japanese, Canadian, Latin American, and even European developers haven’t been anywhere near as shameless in their greed compared to (for instance) Microsoft, Activision, and EA. And it checks out given how out-of-control U.S. businesses have become in their short-sighted, profits-first mentality.
I said western, and I mean western. A lot of them have underwhelmed this gen. Especially in the AAA releases. And you know that is objectively true.
Ubisoft. Am I right?
Ubisoft barely even owns many developers in the US. They have always been teh face of european publishing.
you’re right, my bad.
Oh, if we're talking greed, then this isn't a gaming problem, this is an overall problem in every sector of the US.
Isn’t Asia responsible for 90% of all Gacha and F2P games?
I honestly don't pay attention to that stuff specifically, its the lowest form of gaming. I'm sure a lot of that trash comes from western studios as well.
Nintendo fans crack me up. They think Nintendo, who dropped Rare to begin with, would and still can be the savior of this studio. If you want to be upset with Rare going to MS, blame Nintendo.
Selling Rare was a mistake, what happened to them post that transaction is on Microsoft's hands.
Thats fine but I hear a lot of folks saying, "Nintendo should buy Rare back." If Nintendo wanted Rare they would have kept them.
