4 years of development and they didnt have anything to show except for a CG render? That is absolutely troubled development.

Are there any examples of games which have had 4 straight years of radios silence that have not had major development problems? I mean, Metroid Prime 4 had major issues and was restarted twice. Halo Infinite had major problems and that took 6 years. Scalebound was in development for 4 years before it was cancelled, and it obviously had very troubled development. At least Scalebound had some gameplay to show after it was in development for 2 years (it was cancelled 2 years later), Contraband didn’t even have that for all 4 years. That would indicate to me that the gameplay was not in a state that could be shown to the public. The developers could have been actively working on the game, but no meaningful progress was being made.

This was probably the right call from Microsoft. Though depending on the problems being had, they probably should have cancelled it sooner. It sucks for me to say that because I was interested in this game, but thats the reality of game development. Sometimes an impassable roadblock comes up and its not feasible to continue to fund the sinkhole for 10 years, sometimes its better to pack up and go around.