After being the dominant console last generation, it was kind of weird to see Microsoft fall so hard with the Xbox One. Over the last years, Microsoft had to cancel a lot of projects, including their TV division, Kinect, and a plethora of games like Fables Legends and Scalebound.
Those are some pretty high profile recent cancellations, but all of the Xbox consoles have seen their fair share of dropouts. All ten of these are original properties from well-known studios just going to show that even the best can drop an egg, or two.
10 Cry On
After Hironobu Sakaguchi - the father of Final Fantasy - left Squaresoft, he formed his own studio, Mistwalker. The developer's first two titles, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, were exclusive to Xbox 360. There was a third, however, Cry On.
Announced in 2005, it quietly went away soon after. Sakaguchi later published a concept trailer in 2014 on his personal YouTube channel. It depicts a young girl running away from a mass blob of darkness and it appears she has the power to create and control golems made of stone. How that would have translated into gameplay is unknown.
9 The Crossing
Arkane Studios is known today for their Prey reboot and Dishonored series. One of the earlier projects the studio was involved in was something that would have made Borderlands and Destiny blush. It was going to be a single-player shooter with multiplayer elements thrown in during those segments. This was around 2007.
The funny thing is that the team left this project in order to work on LMNO, the Steven Spielberg collaboration with EA, which was also eventually canceled. The Crossing was going to be on Xbox 360 and PC.
8 The Ripper
Video games have never really gone after Jack the Ripper. There was the somewhat recent DLC for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and…that is pretty much it. However, Visceral Games was working on a game in that same gameplay style, starring Jack the Ripper, who would have fought vampires in London.
That sounds weird but great, right? Well, the rest of the idea's story gets pretty dark, which goes to show why this character is so rough to deal with. Check out the full breakdown on Polygon.
7 Game Of Death
This is another incredibly novel idea involving famous murderers. It is the Mega Man of murder sims, which is to say this game was planned to include at least forty bosses based on notorious serial killers like Charles Manson. This happens in a dream world from a coma victim.
Would these be real kills? Was he traveling through time and reality? Well, we will never know, but this is SOME fantasy that is for sure. Game of Death was going to be on PC, PS2, and the original Xbox, and was being developed by the unknown studio, Burns Entertainment Software.
6 XGirl
This entry's photo is of Red Dead Revolver, which is obviously not a canceled game. That said, XGirl was supposedly being made by Angel Studios, the same studio who would go on to become Rockstar San Diego. As suggested by the title, XGirl was set to be a girlfriend simulator.
The 2000s was lousy with "extreme" and lewd games about girls marketed towards men. There was The Guy Game, Playboy Mansion, BMX XXX, and the list goes on. This was going to be an original Xbox exclusive, although very little else is known about the nature of the project.
5 The Lost
Before Irrational Games made it big with BioShock, they were going to make this game for the original Xbox and PS2. It definitely looked like it was going for similar vibes to BioShock. There are actually a lot of screenshots and trailers available online, as The Lost was prominently advertised for a couple of years.
It was going to be slightly based on The Divine Comedy, which was years before Visceral Games made Dante's Inferno. Could this have inspired them?
4 Dead Rush
The plethora of zombie modes in the Call of Duty franchise started with World at War, which was developed by Treyarch. Before the studio made that FPS game, Treyarch was working on a pure zombie focused shooter called Dead Rush.
At the very least, Dead Rush assuredly went on to influence one of the most famous modes in Call of Duty. This canceled title was going to be on the GameCube, PS2, and original Xbox. Here is a somewhat blurry video preview.
3 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is another biblical-type action game, a sub-genre that has not really been mined too thoroughly by video games. Obviously, the most well-known one is Darksiders. Unlike that game though, players would not play as the Horsemen, but would instead be fighting them.
Even though a biblical apocalypse game sounds cool, we have to imagine playing as Joe Schmoe priest would not have been as cool as being War or Death. 3DO was making this for the GameCube, PS2, and original Xbox. Unseen64 put up a demo of the game on YouTube.
2 Crank the Weasel
Guess what game Crank the Weasel was trying to topple? With a name like Crank, it should be obvious this game wanted to be a raunchy platformer in the same vein as Conker's Bad Fur Day. Rare's platformer was a novel idea that has yet to be truly duplicated, and probably for good reason.
That is to say, some aspects of Conker haven't aged that well; nevertheless, Crank the Weasel's 1920s inspired cartoon aesthetic looks good. Check out some footage for this lost GameCube, PS2, and original Xbox game.
1 Orchid
Argonaut Games, known most notably for Star Fox and helping create the FX Chip for the SNES, was making this adventure brawler for the PS2 and original Xbox. There is a treasure trove of pictures and footage out there, which seems to point out that this was very close to being finished.
Eventually, the publisher, Namco, pulled the plug after the developer couldn't meet the demand to transition the cartoony game to a more realistic style.