Former Everwild Executive Producer Louise O’Connor has landed a new role as Chief of Staff inside Xbox Game Studios, as reported by VideoGamesChronicle. O’Connor had been with Rare for over twenty-five years, her first credits being for 2001's Conker: Bad Fur Day, which was released for the Nintendo 64. She also worked on Conker: Live & Reloaded, Kameo: Elements of Power, Viva Piñata, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Kinect Sports, and Kinect Sports: Rivals.
Unfortunately, unlike all those games, Everwild was never released. As you might remember, the game was originally announced in November 2019 at the X019 event. We got a trailer in 2020, but Rare's studio head at the time, Craig Duncan, also clarified that its gameplay was still being 'brainstormed'.
In June 2021, the project was reportedly rebooted. That inevitably led to a long stretch of silence, but over the last years, rumors emerged suggesting that Rare had found Everwild's groove, rekindling the hopes of fans. As recently as this February, even Xbox Gaming Head Phil Spencer publicly commented that he had witnessed first-hand the good progress Rare had made on the game.
Clearly, that wasn't quite enough for Microsoft when the time of the latest review came, leading to the game's cancellation exactly two months ago as part of the latest massive round of layoffs at Xbox (and other Microsoft divisions). Coincidentally, Rare is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and they certainly weren't thrilled to cancel their new flagship game on such an occasion.
Anyway, O’Connor will likely work closely with Craig Duncan once again. Duncan has been the new head of Xbox Game Studios since October 2024, following Alan Hartman's retirement.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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