Perfect Dark almost found a new home at GTA publisher Take-Two, but has now been abandoned

The new Perfect Dark game might have found a new home at Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind the mega-popular Grand Theft Auto games, but the deal ultimately didn't come together.

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The latest Perfect Dark reboot was close to being resurrected by Take-Two Interactive, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. Diminished games giant Embracer Group was ironing out a deal with Take-Two to fund and publish the Perfect Dark game.

Unfortunately the deal fell through, and Crystal Dynamics was forced to lay off more staff and abandon the project completely.

The report indicates that Take-Two would essentially bid on the publishing rights and purchase them from Microsoft, who owns both the IP and publishing rights for Perfect Dark.

However, it sounds like Take-Two wanted more than just publishing rights. From the sounds of it, the deal broke apart because Take-Two may have wanted to secure the intellectual property rights for Perfect Dark as well as the publishing rights, effectively taking over the franchise.

Take-Two currently has an enviable lineup of mega-selling franchises, including Grand Theft Auto, Borderlands, Red Dead Redemption, 2K Sports games, BioShock, and Mafia.

Microsoft pulled funding for the Perfect Dark game in July, shutting down The Initiative in the process. The game had effectively been cancelled, but Embracer and Crystal Dynamics had the opportunity to shop the game around. Take-Two had been interested, and a deal was ironed out.

Crystal Dynamics has now effectively scuttled the project and is moving on. It's unclear what the studio is currently working on.

Days ago, the studio announced more layoffs via LinkedIn:

Today we made the very difficult decision to part ways with a number of our talented colleagues as the result of evolving business conditions. This decision was not made lightly. It was necessary, however, to ensure the long-term health of our studio and core creative priorities in a continually shifting market.