The X-Wing Team Were Working On A Cancelled Xbox Game

So what happened to the game? It was being developed on a really tight timeframe, in a situation where the Totally Games team didn’t trust the Microsoft people they were reporting to; as an example, Holland remembers that one Xbox boss “had previously managed the Excel spreadsheet program”.

On Microsoft’s side of things, there’s an interesting anecdote surrounding the game’s fate: when current Xbox boss Phil Spencer first moved to the console operation in 2001,“the first assignment he had when he joined the Xbox gaming team was to ‘cancel Larry Holland’s game’”.

The cancellation wasn’t terminal at the time; Totally would go on to release a few more games before making the shift away from traditional games development in 2008. Holland says he found the game’s demise to be “demoralizing”, but also something where “I learned a lot about what to attempt and what not to in terms of sort of risk-taking and at least balancing the risk-taking with the schedule.”

You can read the full report over on Axios, which you should, because it’s got loads of other little bits of trivia about both this game and Totally Games itself.