Hope Amid Xbox Layoffs – WGB

The last few days have not been good for the Xbox brand as Microsoft went on another rampage, jettisoning thousands more employees. Xbox was hit hard, resulting in at least one studio closing, several more on the verge of shutting and numerous cancelled games. But out of the darkness comes a glimmer of something hopeful: Banjo-Kazooie.

The Banjo Kazooie IP has been dormant for many, many years at this point. Creator Gregg Mayels has been clear that he isn’t interested in doing anything with it, and Xbox doesn’t seem to have been interested, either.

Speaking on the latest episode of the VGC podcast, Andy Robinson said as much: “The talk for ages was that, you know, there’s always outside interests in Banjo but they’re not interested. I mean, Gregg (Mayels) is someone who doesn’t look back, notoriously, he said this on the record, that he likes to do new stuff. The attitude from the studio leadership, “no no no, we’re gonna do the new thing.””

However, according to Robinson, attitudes have changed somewhat at Xbox: “I heard more recently the pitches are being listened to.”

Robinson goes on to say that Toys For Bob seems especially keen on doing something with Banjo-Kazooie. Toys for Bob split away from Microsoft last year, but has also publically confirmed that it is working on a game in conjunction with Microsoft and Xbox. There have been rumours that Toys for Bob may be working on a Spyro the Dragon game, and at one point it seemed like the company itself was teasing exactly that.

“Funny enough, I heard Moon Studios as well was another one who’s really interested,” continued Robinson. Moon Studio is best know for its two Ori games.

Robinson also said that there’s always talk of a movie or cartoon based on Banjo Kazooie as well.

I would love to see Banjo Kazooie come back, but given what we’ve seen of Microsoft lately it will be announced tomorrow, disappear for a couple of years, reappear looking strong and then get cancelled five years from now, six months before it was apparently due to launch.

With that said, Xbox going multiplatform presents a pretty good time to bring Banjo-Kazooie back as it could do very well on Nintendo’s hardware.