No, Blade is not cancelled, Arkane artist confirms

Despite what you may have heard, Marvel's Blade, the daywalker action game in development at Arkane, is not cancelled. The proof of life came from Arkane lead concept artist and assistant art director Jean-Luc Monnet, who delivered a short-but-pointed reassurance to fans on X after the game missed its second Xbox Showcase running. In a brief message, Monnet said, "Let us cook," accompanied by a teaser image that confirmed the project is still active.

Concerns About Arkane's Future

Concern about the fate of Blade, and Arkane as a whole, is understandable. Despite making some of the best immersive sims (and thus, by definition, some of the best video games) ever, Arkane has struggled to put a genuine hit on the board. Dishonored 2, despite its lineage, did not sell especially well, and Prey is a massively underappreciated gem; and the less said about the Bethesda-imposed live service catastrophe Redfall, the better.

Microsoft closed Arkane Austin in 2024, a year after Redfall's release, and that brutal handling made the future of the studio as a whole seem far less certain than it should be. PC Gamer's Fraser Brown, in fact, wrote that the absence of Marvel's Blade during the Xbox Games Showcase had him worried about Arkane—and this was in 2025. Rolling through 2026 without even a reminder of its existence naturally conjured up even deeper concerns, especially given Microsoft's desire to prove that it's still in the fight—and the fact that it had relatively little to actually prove it.

A Reassurance for Fans

So it's reassuring news for Blade fans, but possibly still a bit of a stressful situation for the more specific crowd of PlayStation-owning Blade fans. As a licensed Marvel game, my assumption is that it will be released on all platforms—but platforms haven't been announced, and Microsoft's recently turned its eyes back to console exclusives as it gets ready to fight the next round of the console wars. Insomniac's upcoming Wolverine game is a PlayStation 5 exclusive—it'd be a hell of a get for Xbox if it could turn the tables with Blade.

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