Jez Corden has shared a small, but reassuring update, on their upcoming co-op heist game, Contraband.
Jez talked about this during the latest episode of the Xbox Two podcast. He and co-host Rand al Thor 19 fielded questions about Microsoft games, after Jez suddenly revealed he saw alpha footage of Playground Games’ Fable.
Rand told their listeners that Rare and Obsidian Entertainment are probably not ready to show their upcoming games, Everwild and The Outer Worlds 2, respectively. But then Jez had something to say about Avalanche Studios’ Contraband.
Jez confirmed that Contraband is definitely still in development. He then brought up last October, when Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer publicly made a tour of several Microsoft video game studios. We ourselves reported on Phil’s visit to Arkane Studios to check up on Marvel’s Blade. A cursory look of Spencer’s Threads account reveals that he also checked up on Minecraft studio Mojang, Rare and Everwild, and Playground Games for both Fable and Forza Horizon.
Jez says that Phil also went to Avalanche Studios, all the way out in Sweden, to check up on their Contraband. Jez also claims that Avalanche did hit development milestones, as proof that the game is still continuing to progress. Jez goes on to opine that Avalanche was uniquely harmed by the pandemic, because their base country of Sweden was one of those countries that was hardest hit.
And yes, it has certainly been a few years since the pandemic started, and when the WHO declared that it was no longer a global health emergency. What Jez is implying is not that it hurt Avalanche recently, but it hampered development of Contraband since they started working on it.
There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding Contraband from the other rumors coming out about it this year. Most recently, we reported that it was getting positive feedback, but it got delayed to 2025. It may be that the issue is not necessarily with Avalanche (this is the same Avalanche who made the Just Cause games), but with Contraband’s game genre of a heist shooter.
In light of the fierce competition between battle royale and tactical shooter games, heist games seem to be on the backburner. Starbreeze Studios recently announced that they would be working and spending less on development of their signature heist game, Payday 3, after their game failed to live up to fan expectations, and subsequently, their own sales expectations.
Subsequently, Sony has their own heist shooter in development, called Fairgame$. The last we reported on Fairgame$, it apparently received positive feedback, but mirroring the situation with Contraband, Sony and its developer, Haven Studios, is being mum on the status of the game. Unlike Contraband, Fairgame$ faces extra scrutiny for its association to Concord, but truthfully, that’s all vibes and we really don’t know where either game is.
The early success of Helldivers 2 does demonstrate that it isn’t that players don’t want to play co-op shooters anymore, but there’s reason to be skeptical that the market is interested in heist shooters at the moment. We don’t have a crystal ball to definitively tell you that Payday 3, Contraband, and Fairgame$, are definitely all going to succeed, or that they are all definitely going to fail either.
If Contraband is doing better than everyone thinks, the least that Microsoft could do was show us a new trailer soon to prove it. Maybe they could show something in the upcoming The Game Awards, or maybe they’re saving it for the next Xbox Developer Direct in January 2025.
