Players who were waiting for the upcoming Marvel’s Blade can rest assured as the game is one of the few ones that have remained completely unaffected by the recent widespread layoffs from Microsoft which have impacted over 9000 employees across various subsidiaries and branches. As pointed out by The Gamer and confirmed by developer Arkane Lyon’s financial report, Marvel’s Blade is perfectly fine and has entered full production in it’s development stage, with the report clearly stating that Blade “was able to commence at the end of 2024, after the validation of the prototype.” Which means the devs can continue and complete the upcoming third person action adventure title exactly the way they intend without any kind of compromise, which is great for any videogame.
Marvel’s Blade is a single player, third person action title being developed by Arkane Lyon, the developers behind 2021’s critically acclaimed first person shooter Deathloop. Blade features a completely original story featuring the vampire hunter from comicbook fame, the legendary Daywalker as the game puts players in a quarantined zone in Paris which is witnessing events that sort of unfurls a supernatural invasion and terrorizes the entire city.
Blade as a character hasn’t been seen or featured much in videogames, aside from the older Marvel Ultimate Alliance series along with the more recent Marvel Rivals, where his gameplay has been leaked online recently. In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, he’s a fun character to play with lots of cool powers that can lend themselves into really enjoyable and satisfying gameplay mechanics’, if done right. Overall his varied powerset can make a game featuring the character highly engaging and replayable, making a AAA title based on Blade a potential hit, on par with a lot of other great games that came from Marvel’s IP’s like Insomniac’s Spider-Man.
The brutal layoffs from Microsoft have negatively impacted several Xbox studios including Turn 10, Call of Duty Studios, High Moon and many more, leading to complete cancellations of multiple upcoming titles such as Everwild, Perfect Dark among others.