Former The Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has further discussed the cancellation of ZeniMax’s Project Blackbird, which was aiming to be a cross between Cyberpunk 2077 and Destiny.
Speaking to MinnMax, Firor said, “Making games is always a heartbreaking business.” Project Blackbird was canceled for financial reasons, Firor said. He previously said it was the game he had been waiting his entire career to make.
“You could be at the best studio in the world, and decisions happen that impact people. I didn’t agree with what happened, but I understood the reasoning behind it. It is just financial,” he said, as reported by Kotaku.
When Xbox’s management conducted a business review, Firor and his team showed up as “a number on a ledger,” he said. He suggested Project Blackbird was an expensive project, and that contributed to Microsoft’s decision to cancel it.
“We’re a number on a ledger, and if that number is large, it is ripe for analysis, shall we say, and that number was always large,” he said.
Firor went on to say that Microsoft, as a company, likes to have businesses where revenue goes up and to the right on a consistent basis. But the video game space is hit-driven and cyclical.
“This is like all public companies. They want reliable forecastable business. And the entertainment, like the video game industry, just doesn’t work that way sometimes,” he said. “It’s a business, and it’s terrible sometimes. And I don’t agree with some of the decisions obviously, but the reasoning behind them makes sense on a ledger somewhere.”
Finally, Firor said Project Blackbird was far from finished, but he said it would have stood out from the crowd and was “different than anything else out there.”
“The world probably would have been a better place with that game in it as far as I’m concerned,” he said. For more, check out some early footage of Project Blackbird.
Following the game’s cancellation and layoffs at the studio, some affected workers started new studios, including the employee-owned Sackbird Studios.
“After years in AAA, we wanted the freedom to take smart risks without waiting for a greenlight or chasing quarterly targets,” CEO Lee Ridout said about the formation of the new studio.
After working at ZeniMax for 18+ years, Firor is now “advising some projects and start-ups,” he wrote on LinkedIn. He also said he has “made some investments in small teams….” Some have wondered if Firor may start a new studio, but he said he has “not yet seriously contemplated” this.
The cancellation of Project Blackbird came as part of wider cuts at Xbox. Rare’s Everwild was also canceled, as was the new Perfect Dark from The Initiative–the studio was also closed.