Former ZeniMax Online Studios founder and studio head Matt Firor has finally spoken openly about Project Blackbird's cancellation.
Firor, who was behind the successful release of The Elder Scrolls Online and its continued support for many years, left the studio following Microsoft's decision to cancel the project after many years of development. Shortly after that news, he admitted that the two things were directly related.
Now, speaking to MinnMax, he provided a lot more color on why he feels the decision to shut down Project Blackbird is a missed opportunity for Xbox.
It's conflicted. I'm so proud of what the team accomplished in the time that we had, and we had several curveballs thrown at us. COVID happened right when we were supposed to start ramping up hiring, so everything just got stretched out. But how do I feel about it overall? I think it's a missed opportunity, for me, for ZOS, for Bethesda, for Xbox. I think it would have been a fantastic game. I understand the reasoning that went into the cancellation, and this is why making games is always a heartbreaking business. No matter what happens, 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's more: we were a number on a ledger, and if that number is large, it is ripe for analysis, shall we say. That number was always large. Over the years, we always explained why we were front-loading a lot of costs and what they were going to get for it. But eventually the industry just got to a point where it looked to the people there, and elsewhere in the industry, like a very large bet. And they needed to hedge their large bets. I think that's what happened.
It was handled professionally. It was explained why it was happening, I said how I saw it, they said they totally understood, and we agreed to make the transition as smooth as possible. ESO is still in a great place, and I'm happy for that. But I'm sad, mostly for the team we had put together, who got their walking papers totally unexpectedly. The world probably would have been a better place with that game in it, as far as I'm concerned.
We later learned that Project Blackbird was a third-person online shooter in which players became Revenants, bio-enhanced operatives working for alien syndicates in the underworld of Soteria, a tidally locked planet with extreme biomes. In Project Blackbird, players would rise through the criminal and corporate ranks to uncover a murder conspiracy. Unfortunately, we'll never get to play the game ourselves.
ZeniMax Online has now refocused on The Elder Scrolls Online, by the way. The team recently provided an overview of what's coming in 2026 and beyond.
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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