What you need to know
- Microsoft is battling the FTC in court over its attempts to purchase Activsion-Blizzard for Xbox.
- As part of the court case, a ton of juicy documents has been revealed, detailing Xbox's inner workings.
- As a result, we now have hard, public confirmation of Project Dragon from IO Interactive, a title that was previously revealed exclusively here on Windows Central.
- The documents list Project Dragon as Xbox exclusive, which may have morphed into Project Fantasy, which IO revealed last year.
- Given the age of the documents, it remains to be seen if Project Dragon/Fantasy is indeed still Xbox exclusive.
A few years ago, I revealed Project Dragon exclusively here on Windows Central. The project is (or was) in development at IO Interactive, makers of Hitman. Now, for the first time, we have public confirmation from Microsoft that the game is not only real, but at least at one point, was an Xbox exclusive.
Microsoft is battling the FTC in court over its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King, makes of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and various other big games. The acquisition is worth $69 billion dollars, and has a large amount of regulatory hurdles to overcome before it can go ahead. The FTC, supported by PlayStation, wants to block the deal, and it remains to be seen whether or not they will get their wish.
Either way, the Xbox vs. FTC court case has seen a huge raft of documents published as part of the proceedings. Some are doubtless hugely embarrassing for Microsoft, since they contain private conversations about a variety of topics.
As part of a tranche of communique detailing studios Microsoft was interested in acquiring, one document outlines the properties being worked on by IO Interactive, one such studio Microsoft was interested in picking up. Within that document is the unmistakable codename of Project Dragon.
Emails published by the FTC Discovery, shows IO Interactive Project Dragon is an Xbox exclusive #Xbox pic.twitter.com/Rz741QLYT8June 26, 2023
Per our previous information, Project Dragon took cues from the likes of World of Warcraft and Diablo, as a dark fantasy RPG with service game online components. Last year, IO Interactive went public with a title codenamed Project Fantasy, which at least on the surface, would appear to be a new codename for Project Dragon. Project Fantasy has no confirmed platforms as of yet, but it's also unconfirmed whether or not it actually is Project Dragon.
The documents are from 2021, and potentially raise more questions than answers: Is Project Dragon indeed Project Fantasy? Did they swap codenames due to the previous leak? If so, is Project Fantasy still an Xbox exclusive? Did Project Dragon get canceled, and reworked into Project Fantasy, similar to how Blizzard's Project Titan got reworked into Overwatch? Right now, one can only guess.
The court case has already led to the reveal of another upcoming Xbox game, in the form of Indiana Jones, a title that was previously expected to be multi-platform. Who knows what else we could see revealed in the coming days?
