Earlier this week, Kotaku broke the news that Scalebound seemed to be in trouble. It was, and Microsoft confirmed it was pulling the plug. Now Platinum Games and Scalebound director Hideki Kamiya have issued comments regarding the cancellation.
[Image: Microsoft]
Here is the statement from Platinum Games President and CEO Kenichi Sato:
Regarding the Cancellation of Scalebound
We’re sorry to say that on January 9, 2017, Microsoft Studios announced the cancellation of Scalebound. We are very disappointed things ended up this way, especially since we know many of our fans were looking forward to this game as much as we were.
Going forward, we will strive to continue delivering high-quality games to you, starting with NieR:Automata in March, and including products like GRANBLUE FANTASY Project Re:Link and LOST ORDER in the future.
We will keep working hard to meet your expectations and we look forward to your continued support!
President and CEO
Kenichi Sato
Obviously, there isn’t anything in here as to why the game was canned. Kotaku‘s original story pointed out that the ambitious Microsoft exclusive appeared to be stuck in development hell.
Scalebound director Hideki Kamiya also apologised, taking to Twitter:
As you may have already heard, Scalebound has unfortunately been canceled. I’m very sorry to everyone who was looking forward to this game.
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 11, 2017
Sorry to bring you such bad news at the start of the year. All I can do for you is to promise to keep delivering fun games.
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 11, 2017
I’ll work extra hard to never have to let you down like this again, so I hope you will keep watching over us in the future too.
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 11, 2017
Thanx for your lots of messages!!
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 11, 2017
Kamiya also added the following:
And…I took time off for my mental health? …Me!?
No way.
— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) January 11, 2017
Comments
14 responses to “Platinum Games Apologises For Scalebound’s Cancellation ”
Nice to see Kamiya is back.
Dammit! Who’s responsible??
Seriously though, 2017 is looking to be a pretty full year for me anyway…
It really depends on how you want to lay the blame.
Ultimately, Microsoft is responsible for the cancellation of the contract that resulted in Scalebound being cancelled, but that doesn’t mean Platinum Games of Hideki Kamiya weren’t responsible for creating a situation where Microsoft felt the only course of action was to cancel the project. Microsoft takes the monetary loss here and had everything to lose (Money, a game for their platform and a hit to public perception) so its highly doubtful this move was done on a whim.
I tend to fall towards perhaps Platinum Games mismanaged the project and didn’t treat the contract with Microsoft as seriously as others. After all, since Scalebound’s announcement, Platinum has confirmed that they were working on 9 other titles (some released, others not just yet) and when you have a relatively moderate development team, estimated around 200 people – quality will take a hit. Perhaps due to this workload that Platinum took upon itself by agreeing to make so many games during the period which they should have been focusing towards Scalebound they ended up missing numerous deadlines until the point where Microsoft just didn’t want to sink more money into a product that wouldn’t perform to their expectations.
Platinum Games clearly has an A and B team in the studio; maybe Microsoft saw that they B team was taking control of Scalebound and then simply said nope.
Or perhaps they took on that much work to help them pay the bills for other things that wouldn’t be paid…?
You’ve got to assume the game wasn’t as far along as it should have been. Microsoft wouldn’t pull a game that was 3 years into development unless it looked like it wasn’t going to be finished to a high enough standard. For them to actually cancel something, you’ve got to assume that the amount of money they still needed to put into it was going to be significant enough to outweigh the cost of just finishing it up quickly and throwing it out there to recoup some of the loss.
Expect Sony announcement at E3
Microsoft were bankrolling it and were going to publish it. That most likely means they own the IP and Platinum couldn’t just take it and move it.
“Coming next year exclusively to PS4 – Bound in Scales!”
Wasnt Sony bank-rolling LA Noire last gen too?
Originally but they passed the publishing rights to Rockstar. And it’s slightly different there because Brendan McNamara was a former SCEE guy before he set up Team Bondi.
It’s entirely possible that Platinum do still have Scalebound’s rights though, since I think that Kamiya took it to Microsoft rather than Microsoft contracting them to make the game.
SwitchBound?
On a Nintendo platform it will be ‘That monster hunter clone’
This game looked awful. Better to cancel than release a shit game.
Yeah just what everyone wanted, no game!