Microsoft Cancels Scalebound

[Xeogred]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01/09/ ... -cancelled
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... ent-ceased

Ouch.

I wasn't super impressed with some of the footage I was seeing, but this thing was years deep into development. Sucks for Platinum and Kamiya. Wonder what the real issues were.

“After careful deliberation, Microsoft Studios has come to the decision to end production for Scalebound. We’re working hard to deliver an amazing lineup of games to our fans this year, including Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves and other great experiences.”

Double ouch? Who cares? Because MS is clearly in NO need of new IP's right now...

I'm just going to be blunt and say that I am so glad I never bought an Xbone. The writing is on the wall and MS is clearly putting almost zero effort into game development thesedays. I have fond memories and stories about the Xbox and 360, but I wish they'd just go away now.

[Fragems]

Maybe Recore bombing so badly gave them second thoughts about rushing another game out the door?

[Xeogred]

The game did look like it had a lot of technical hiccups from some footage shown. I blame open world design.

Let Platinum get back to Bayonetta 3 or something.

Hope this doesn't hurt Platinum though. It looked like it was going to be their biggest project.

[isiolia]

Maybe Recore bombing so badly gave them second thoughts about rushing another game out the door?

In either case, they're publishing, not developing. If quality were the sole concern, they could have delayed the release - or continued delaying, I suppose, given that it was supposed to come out last year.

I'm still curious what MS will wind up bringing out with/for Scorpio, since I suspect they're holding announcements for that.

[TSTR]

Can we just get Bayonetta on PC so I'll actually play the damn thing?

[alienjesus]

I feel like the only time I hear anything about Xbox One nowadays it's because Microsoft has either cancelled a game or closed down one of their studios. It's pretty worrying, especially on a system that's crying out for exclusives to justify it's existence. There just really isn't any reason to buy an XBox One if you already have a PS4 - like 5 exclusives of note, and half of them are probably Halo.

[MrEco]

Can't say I'm torn up over this news. Scalebound did not look like my cup of tea. Seemed like a big mish-mash of different game design styles. Third person shooter mixed with hack-and-slash action and big dinosaur beat em up gameplay? Little too schizophrenic looking for me to trust it would turn out well. Usually games that try to mix and match different gameplay styles don't do well at any one of those things in particular. And from the gameplay I saw at E3 and such, the third person shooter segments and hack and slash combat both looked very simplistic.

With all that said however, I do hope this doesn't turn out to hurt Platinum. They're a solid developer who've never made anything offensively bad that I know of, and have made quite a few great games.

At the very least, if they're going to go out of business can they wait until after Nier Automata releases?

[Fragems]

What would be hilarious is if Sony acquired the rights to it although a console swap would throw it even deeper into development hell at this point, and I'm sure Microsoft has put up some legal barriers to prevent that from happening. If this game through some miracle did became a PS4 exclusive though I would just laugh my ass off .

At this point Sony is just destroying Microsoft which is sad since I don't really see Nintendo as much of a direct competitor at this point. Hopefully the Scorpio turns things around but unless they start nailing down some more exclusives there really isn't going to be much of a point. About the only exclusive I'm looking forward to in the near future is State of Decay 2 and I figure it will probably have a PC port anyways .

[Kuruwin]

That would be throwing salt on wounds but i would imagine too that there would be legal issues of bringing it to PS4.

But yeah. I would be really happy if that happened.

[avrame]

I think this reddit post voiced my opinion well enough:

This is what happens when you take a 200 man team and develop 9 games at the same time as a project like Scalebound. Between the announcement of Scalebound and the cancellation they started and/or finished these games:

Bayonetta 2
The Legend of Korra
Transformers: Devastation
Star Fox Zero
Star Fox Guard
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan
Neir Automata
Granblue Fantasy Project Re:Link
Lost Order



On top of this they apparently forced senior developers off of Scalebound in late 2016, after the game had already been delayed. Apparently when this happened it was the nail in the coffin for the game. They apparently missed major deadlines that Microsoft had set in order to get the game back on track to the point where Microsoft stopped funding the project and finally cancelled it. From the same sources the game was also still having major performance issues.
People are pushing the idea that Microsoft took this lightly, Microsoft had the most to lose with their decision. They bought the IP, funded the project, paid to advertise, gave it two E3 demonstrations, delayed it and gave them more time to work on it and now that it's cancelled they spent all that money and have nothing as a result.

Terrible point of comparison, but like with Konami and MGS:V, Microsoft reached a point that they saw that they would not turn a profit on the game if they were to delay it further and throw more money at the developers. I don't know if there is any truth in the matter, but to give a company money to develop a game for you, only to have them work on other unrelated projects, and allocate their high-profile developers off your project to work on lackluster games, I'd be quick to cut ties with them too.

Waiting on Kamiya to point the finger at Microsoft.