Unknown 9 franchise cancelled as developer admits game "didn't come near" expectations, series "didn't warrant any further exploration"Studio suffers further job losses as future project canned.Image credit: Bandai Namco News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Jan. 21, 2025 The studio behind bold Assassin's Creed-meets-Tomb Raider transmedia attempt Unknown 9 has signalled an end to the franchise, following the poor performance of last year's initial video game.Unknown 9: Awakening, a generic globe-trotting adventure starring The Witcher TV series' Anya Chalotra, "didn't come near the company's expectations," the boss of developer Reflector Entertainment Herve Hoerdt said in a statement today, "and didn't warrant any further exploration in this universe". Ouch.One of the Reflector's two future projects - presumably another Unknown 9 game which had been in the "conceptualisation phase" - has now been cancelled, Hoerdt added. This therefore means the studio was "terminating this development line".Unknown 9: Awakening trailer.Watch on YouTube"This decision correlates directly with the failure of the studio's ambitious and courageous first project, a new IP with a rich transmedia universe," Hoerdt continued. Reflector had ambitious plans for Unknown 9 as an ongoing series, supported by podcasts, comics, novels, and several web series. While many of these have now been released, some ahead of Awakening itself, following a lengthy delay to the video game, none appear to have made any real impression.Reflector will now go through a second round of redundancies, following previous job losses reported back in November 2024, as the company shrinks to a "single project approach the studio will adopt for the imminent future". This project is an "existing Bandai Namco IP" and is "shaping up well", Hoerdt concluded.