Former ZeniMax Online Head Matt Firor Calls Project Blackbird Cancellation “A Missed Opportunity for Xbox”

Former ZeniMax Online Studios founder Matt Firor has now spoken in much greater detail about the cancellation of Project Blackbird, and his view is clear: the game’s shutdown was a missed opportunity not only for his studio, but for Bethesda and Xbox as well. Speaking during a MinnMax interview, Firor said he was proud of what the team accomplished, but described the cancellation as a painful outcome for a project he believed could have been something special. Reporting summarizing the interview quotes him directly as saying it was “a missed opportunity for me, for ZOS, for Bethesda, for Xbox,” and that he believed it “would have been a fantastic game.”

Firor also made it clear that, in his view, the decision came down to financial exposure more than creative confidence. According to the interview coverage, he said the project became “a number on a ledger,” and because that number was large, it became vulnerable to scrutiny as the industry pulled back from major risk. He said the team had long explained why costs were being front loaded and what the eventual return could be, but that the wider market shifted to a point where the project looked like too large a bet.

That framing matters because it lines up with earlier reporting on the project’s cancellation. In 2025, Bloomberg reported that ZeniMax Online’s new MMORPG, codenamed Blackbird, had been in development since 2018 and was canceled as part of Microsoft’s broader cuts, despite reportedly having a positive internal reception and a long development runway. IGN’s later reporting on the canceled game described it as a third person online sci fi title set on the planet Soteria, where players took on the role of Revenants, bio enhanced operatives working among alien syndicates while uncovering a murder conspiracy.

Firor’s comments suggest he understood the logic even if he disagreed with the outcome. He reportedly said the cancellation was handled professionally and that the reasoning was explained, but he remained deeply saddened for the team who were let go unexpectedly. He also said “the world probably would have been a better place with that game in it,” which captures how personally invested he remained in the project after years of work.

The emotional weight of that statement carries extra force because Firor had spent nearly 2 decades helping build and sustain The Elder Scrolls Online. Recent coverage notes that even after leaving the studio, he still plays ESO quietly and remains closely attached to the game and its community. That makes his frustration over Blackbird’s cancellation feel less like a routine executive disagreement and more like the reaction of a veteran developer who believed he was finally building the next big thing for the studio he founded.

Meanwhile, ZeniMax Online has shifted its focus back to The Elder Scrolls Online. The studio has already outlined its broader 2026 plans, including a major new era for the MMO built around fresh seasonal content and structural changes to how content is delivered. Bethesda and ZeniMax Online announced those next steps earlier this year, reinforcing that ESO remains the studio’s active priority after Blackbird’s cancellation.

What remains especially striking is how Firor framed the loss in Xbox terms, not just personal ones. Calling it a missed opportunity for Xbox suggests he believed Project Blackbird could have filled a meaningful strategic gap in Microsoft’s portfolio, particularly as a large scale online game with a new universe instead of another legacy franchise entry. That is still an inference based on his wording, but it is a reasonable one given the scale and genre of the canceled project.

For now, Project Blackbird remains one of the more painful what if stories to come out of Xbox’s recent restructuring wave. Firor’s comments do not change the outcome, but they do make one thing clearer: from the perspective of the person who led ZeniMax Online for 18 years, this was not just another canceled game. It was a real shot at something bigger, and he still believes Xbox let it slip away.

Do you think Xbox missed out by canceling Project Blackbird, or was cutting a large new live service bet the smarter move in the current market?