Xbox says it will share more on Everwild ‘when Rare has something cool to show’

Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty has said Rare’s Everwild team wants to make sure it has “something special” before showing the game publicly again.

Rare announced the new IP in November 2019 and released another trailer in July 2020, but updates on the game since then have been rare.

Earlier this year, VGC sources with knowledge of Everwild’s development claimed the game’s design had essentially been “restarted from scratch”, meaning it would likely be several years before it’s released.

In response to an advance copy of our story, Everwild’s executive producer Louise O’Connor confirmed elements of the report, including the appointment of designer Gregg Mayles as its new creative director.

Asked about the status of the game during a Kinda Funny Games interview this week, Xbox’s Booty suggested the challenges Rare has faced are a natural part of the creative process.

“When you look at it from the outside, when you hear words like reset and maybe restructure, I’ll just say that those are probably a little more definite and a little more extreme than what really happens as a game comes to life,” he claimed.

On where the Everwild team is right now, he said: “They’re just trying to make sure that they’ve got something special. We’ve shown kind of a glimpse of a world, you’ve seen the art style that the team has got, but we want to get it right.”

Booty added: “We’ll share more on Everwild when the team has got some cool stuff to show. We know that there’s excitement and anticipation for it and we don’t want to just keep things hidden for too long”.

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In June, VGC’s sources claimed Everwild’s development team was “optimistically” targeting a 2024 release for the game.

Were the title to release then, it would mark a decade of development for Everwild, which spent many years in experimental prototyping before its eventual announcement, we were told.

Elsewhere in the Kinda Funny interview, Booty revealed Xbox jumped at the chance to bring Crystal Dynamics on board to co-develop the Perfect Dark reboot.

He also said Xbox wants to get better at making the type of immersive blockbuster games that rival PlayStation is known for.