The game director of Perfect Dark appears to have left The Initiative

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The upcoming Xbox reboot of Perfect Dark appears to have lost its game director, according to their LinkedIn profile.

As spotted by Resetera forum member Klobrille, Dan Neuburger appears to have departed The Initiative last month. Video Games Chronicle notes Neuburger’s profile page states he’s now open to work in game, creative and design director roles. Neuburger had been aboard The Initiative since 2018, coming from Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics.

Funnily enough, Crystal Dynamics are actually now working on Perfect Dark, and have been since September. The announcement was also notable as several former developers of Crystal Dynamics were already at the newer studio. This included studio head Darrell Gallagher who has had the same role at both studios at one time or another.

It’s the second recent high-profile departure from the Perfect Dark development team in just over a year. Back in February of last year, the game’s former lead designer Drew Murray departed the studio to re-join his former colleagues at Insomniac Games.

We’ve not seen a great deal of updates on Perfect Dark since the collaboration with Crystal Dynamics announcement. The first person spy thriller is said to be taking an ecological theme, but aside from that all’s been quiet of late. Perhaps we’ll hear more this summer, but for now we’ll have to wait and see how Perfect Dark is getting along following the departure of its director. The reboot is currently in development for Xbox Series X|S.

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Ben Borthwick

Ben Borthwick is the News Editor for VideoGamer. He's a fan of action adventure games, music games and especially comedic games like the Monkey Island series.

Perfect Dark (The Initiative)

  • Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series S
  • Genre(s): Shooter