It’s been over 5 years since Rare’s in-development project Everwild was announced by Xbox, and details have been thin on the ground ever since. In a recent interview, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said that Everwild is proceeding well.
Speaking to XboxEra, Spencer mentioned a few games in passing that he’s excited for. Everwild was one of those games, with Spencer confirming that Rare is making “progress” on the project. “I do think the work that Double Fine’s doing and how [Double Fine founder Tim Schafer] kind of solicits feedback from the team,” Spencer said in part. “And the other one, I’ll say because I was recently out at Rare. It’s nice to see the team with Everwild and the progress that they’re making.”
Spencer also mentioned State of Decay 3 as part of the same section, with the Xbox boss calling the series “one that I love.” Later in the interview, Spencer said that studios like Rare are allowed more time to make long-in-the-oven games like Everwild because Xbox’s current slate is already packed with games. He also indicated that the next studio he’s going to visit is The Coalition, the stewards of the Gears of War franchise.
Everwild is one of those “missing games” that it’s easy to forget about, given that it was first announced in 2019, even before the start of the current console generation. A 2022 report suggests that the project was internally rebooted following the departure of the game’s creative director Simon Woodroffe back in 2020. Everwild’s current director is Gregg Mayles, a Rare veteran who worked on games like Sea of Thieves, Viva Pinata, and Banjo-Kazooie. We still have no word on a potential release date for Everwild.