Gameplay footage from cancelled Xbox Perfect Dark game leaks online, and it looks pretty good

Last year, we learned that Xbox cancelled a reboot of Perfect Dark. The game, in development at The Initiative, was cancelled as part of 2025’s wave of wide-ranging cuts at Microsoft and Xbox. In 2026, of course, things have only gotten worse for the company.

Over the past 24 hours, leaked gameplay footage of the Perfect Dark reboot has surfaced online, giving us a glimpse at what could have been. The gameplay, first unearthed by MP1ST, shows off a few of the different weapons protagonist Joanna Dark would have been able to use, as well as a few different environments she’d have been sneaking and fighting her way through. MP1ST claims the footage it uncovered – which has since spread around various social media accounts – comes from a VFX artist that “has previous experience working on various gaming franchises”. The authenticity of the footage is hard to ascertain but it certainly looks the part.

The Perfect Dark footage includes the bare-bones layouts of some level environments, a little gunplay testing (this looks to be particularly early), a couple of abilities, and even a few pieces of destructible fruit. Delicious.

The reboot of Rare’s Perfect Dark series was first announced back in December 2020, and was in development at new Xbox Game Studios developer The Initiative. The game became infamous for its slow and seemingly difficult development, with Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics at one point recruited to help with it. In May 2024, reports suggested “little meaningful progress” had been made since the game’s unveiling and that the reboot was in “a very rough state”.

We got our first trailer for the Perfect Dark game just after that report, however, which seemed to reignite belief in the project. Alas, one year later, reports of its demise began to circulate. The game would have reportedly taken on an episodic structure, and after its cancellation, there was a suggestion that Take-Two might have snapped up the rights to the game, but this apparently fell through.