Scalebound’s Cancellation Was Not Microsoft’s Fault, Says Platinum
Paolo Sirio
Scalebound is one of the most painful stories you can read about video games now, and despite its cancellation having happened three years ago it still has something new to reveal.
As you might recall, the game was revealed at first as an Xbox One exclusive and then joined the newly founded Xbox Play Anywhere, with a release planned for Windows 10 PC, too. Finally, in 2016 it was abruptly canceled after years spent in development hell.
Platinum Games’ studio head Atsushi Inaba has discussed the cancellation in a recent interview with VCG, outlining how it was sad for the team to see Microsoft taking all the blame from fans waiting for the game to release.
“Both sides failed [and we] didn’t do all of the things that we needed to do as a developer,” said Inaba, before adding that “watching fans getting angry at Microsoft over the cancellation wasn’t easy for us to watch. Because the reality is when any game in development can’t get released it’s because both sides failed.”
“I think there are areas where we could’ve done better, and I’m sure there are areas that Microsoft as a publishing partner wish that they could’ve done better because nobody wants a game to be cancelled. (…) The truth is, we don’t like to see Microsoft take the brunt of the fan ire because game development is hard and both sides learned lessons, for sure.”
Interestingly, the studio head admitted that Scalebound was revealed too early in the making of the project, and that, for how painful that experience ended up being, it was not the reason why Platinum is moving towards self-publication.
Anyway, that path will still require a lot of time to get concrete, since Platinum still has Astral Chain and Bayonetta 3 in the making for Nintendo, and Babylon’s Fall for Square Enix.
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