Scalebound cancelled [Platinum Games and Kamiya have commented]

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Why would they purposely make them unachieveable? What would they gain from that?

I mean I could understand them being terrible at planning and budgeting but to straight up purposely cause them to fail? I don't buy that.

Not unheard of for a publisher acting in bad faith to start demanding unrealistic milestones for a project to give themselves an excuse to terminate the project, possibly without being liable for a payout they may have owed had they simply decided to cancel the project for other reasons.
 
Seems like a flimsy way to throw out their reputation.

Kamiya has worked on gigantic projects in the past. For their time, RE2 and Okami are gigantic achievements -- much bigger relative to the industry standard than Scalebound would have been. They know what they are doing.

Scalebound never looked as bad as the awful gameplay showings of Recore, for example.
Yeah I don't see how Platinum are to be blamed especially if microsoft withholding payment is true. It's a shame this game is cancelled, I was looking forward to seeing what it would have been.

lol @ Gies saying Platinum is "50/50 at best" when they've made, what was it, like two disappointing games?
That's Gies for you, he will defend Microsoft at every turn.
 
E3 2014 Microsoft Exclusives Shown:

1. Fable Legends: Cancelled
2. Project Spark: Cancelled
3. Ori and the Blind Forest: Came out 2015, 360 version cancelled?
4. Inside: Came out 2016
5. Below: Unreleased
6. Phantom Dust: Cancelled
7. Crackdown: Unreleased
8. Scalebound: Cancelled
9. Halo 5: Came out 2015


E3 2014 Sony Exclusives Shown:

1. Deep Down: Unreleased
2. Eve: Valkyrie: Came out 2016
3. Let It Die: Came out 2016
4. The Order: 1886: Came out 2015
5. The Witness: Came out 2016
6. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture: Came out 2015
7. Bloodborne: Came out 2015
8. No Man's Sky: Came out 2016
9. Ratchet & Clank: Came out 2016
10. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: Came out 2016
"PS4 has no games"
 
First Phantom Dust, Fable Legends, now Scalebound.

That is a fucking lot of money down the drain and with absolutely nothing to show for it.

I wonder how MS proceeds in the future.

Fable legends was garbage (sorry if anyone liked it) so I could see why they did that, they have reasons to do what they do i know people want to murder them at the moment but the best thing to do is wait and see what legit info comes out.
 
eh, damn:

Q5EzNi6.png


this is fucked up if true
I really hope that's not true, that's Konami levels of crap if it is. :(

Who is Adam Bolton? Would he know about stuff like this? Sorry but I never seem to know who people likes this are when they're quoted on here.
 
If I had to bet, I would say it probably was a mismanagement for both sides! I doubt MS did a shady contract on purpose just to fuck with Platinum (and also themselves it seems), but giving Platinum history I also doubt they just raised their hands during the project and said "fuck it!".

Probably they were not having a good relationship cause MS wasn't giving them proper support (for not believing in their game at some point maybe), and that's when their project may have started to go down the hole.
 
If you want to support Platinum, pick up Nier: Automata. It's also a really good game and is probably Metal Gear Rising 2 before Konami cleaned house.
 
I know most people won't like hearing this but...


It was probably the right call.

4 years of dev time-all sunk cost. We don't know when the game would be released nor do we know if it would be good or not. It could have tested poorly with audiences. Regardless of "impossible milestones" Platinum should have been able to release a game with the time they were given.

We also have to remember that the hope is that these "hardcore" games break into the mainstream video game market. We need to look at what exclusives really propelled the Xbox brand in the past and what smaller "hardcore" titles have become large "blockbusters" in the past 10-15 years-Halo, GTA, Uncharted, Assassins Creed, Fallout/Elder Scrolls, Battlefield, Call of Duty. Think about what type of games are driving console sales and what type of games you see ads for on ESPN. None of the games that have gone from "hardcore" audience to having commercials on primetime tv have been Japanese games. Japanese titles just don't move consoles in NA and Europe. MS has followed suit by pushing new IPs in these "blockbuster" genres like Crackdown, Quantum Break, Alan Wake, Ryse, Sunset Overdrive, Titanfall 1 etc but has not been able to replicate the success of other titles. They are chasing after the "hot" markets but just failing to make a big splash.

In addition we have seen a huge shift in the way game development works. While western titles have been getting shorter and shorter dev cycles (often too short) Japanese dev cycles have become longer. See Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, The Last Guardian etc. These long cycles are expensive and the market for these titles is just too small to support them.

Finally we have to look at MS' track record with Japanese games and with Japan as a whole. People in Japan have no desire to buy a western console-that much was apparent before the 360 even came out. That said MS' has made a rather commendable effort to partner with Japanese developers to push their console overseas and pick up a few sales from the "hardcore" audience in the US. Just look at Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive etc. Despite their best efforts and partnerships MS has yet to strike gold. MS doesn't hate Japan or Japanese developers; they want to sell more consoles and break into the Japanese market but despite numerous exclusive titles aimed at Japanese consumers they do not have anything to show for their efforts.


All of that to say I am not going to defend short development cycles, cash ins, all of the first party cosmetic DLC in games like Gears, etc. MS has a litany of issues but this seems like it was a business decision. If the game was not going to be profitable and was going to continue to cost them money then caning it was the best decision.
 
I was blocked by Gies a long time ago during the original Xbox One always online stuff. I retweeted something he said (i don't remember what), then blocked. I never talked about him before, never followed him, never knew about him, never communicated with him. I didn't even have a GAF account yet but I was sharing information from GAF and good GAF posts on the topic, and other news sources as things were happening. Maybe he thought I was a gaffer? I have no idea.

Ah, maybe it's a GAF thing then? But I searched through my own feed and I said negative things about Polygon a while ago so maybe it's that. Coincidentally it was related to PlatinumGames as well, they put out an article about Minami stepping down which decided to focus on Star Fox Zero's reception which I found to be irrelevant and frankly try-hard. Gies was the one who "declined to review Star Fox Zero" at the time, I hadn't made that connection until now.

But I never directed anything at Gies himself, nor at Polygon's account, so I'm surprised to learn he might have found this to be a reason to block me. It wasn't anything big either, just two tweets or so. I'm almost offended, and I barely even knew about him either. Seems really petty
 
Seems like a flimsy way to throw out their reputation.

Kamiya has worked on gigantic projects in the past. For their time, RE2 and Okami are gigantic achievements -- much bigger relative to the industry standard than Scalebound would have been. They know what they are doing.

Scalebound never looked as bad as the awful gameplay showings of Recore, for example.

Kamiya has never done an open world RPG of this scope. He's even admitted that this was his biggest game ever and that Platinum didn't have all the technical experience for something of this magnitude. This isn't exactly an easy genre to do or manage, ask Kojima.

This was a very technically complex game for Platinum and that was supposed to have been the point for them as they wanted to challenge themselves.
 
Actually, I have heard from my friends at MS that the whole gaming division is under heavy scrutiny. I really wouldn't be surprised to see them drastically cut, and even more I highly expect the "Scorpio" to be delayed - that is a piece of information I have been keeping to myself to keep from being labeled a console warrior... We know there will be a new Forza this year, but everything else is up in the air...

I'd expect some kind of Minecraft clone to "diversify" the third-party lineup if Scorpio actually releases this year.

Meanwhile, MS is sitting on all of Rare's properties which we may never see again. If it won't be a major "success", the game will never see release. So probably never see another Banjo, or Conker, or any number of titles. Instead, they have Rare working on a multiplayer (has to be), pirate simulator. Pray Sea of Thieves is a success, or Rare will be next studio canned.

Looking at your post history, I can't imagine why anybody might call you a console warrior...
 
I thought this forum was supposed to above all the fanboyism name calling bullshit.



It's a comparison of games that were shown at E3 2014. Sony chose to not show new games that were too far away from being completed and stuck to ones that were previously announced. Microsoft instead chose to show games that were far away from being completed. This is what's being compared. No one is being disingenuous.

But I prefaced my response to you saying that everything MS announced at E32014 was brand-new just seen, where as only about 4 titles of 10 your Sony list were.

The underlying message would have been the same, Sony had more announced releases from 2014 than Microsoft did, even with Microsoft announcing more titles; except that you have improperly categorized the games. If we're talking about new announcements that have been either released, unreleased, or cancelled from E3 2014, 5+ of the games you listed for Sony do not belong on that list.
 
Sorry, I'm not this foul usually. Didn't even really say this about Konami during their worst moments but, seriously, in all honesty, with all my heart: fuck Arthur Gies.

He's a damn non-paid shill who's systematically wrong about every single thing.

Is what I'd say, but I noticed he likes cats, so he can't actually be that bad.
 
As long as Crackdown 3 is going to be okay, I'm not really upset about the cancellation of Scalebound. I'm saying this as someone who is a new Xbox One S owner and planning to get Scorpio at launch even if it's $499. PlatinumGames have been dealing with too many projects for the last several years and I'm surprised Scalebound wasn't canceled sooner. It sucks for those looking forward to the game, but something had it to give. I'm not ruling out the notion that Scalebound could be a Scorpio game, but that wasn't my thought, I just saw people mentioning Scorpio implying that it might happen, not that I really think it will tho.
 
Could be. Or it could be Kenji Saito is just that great a director and Eiro Shirahama isn't actually that bad. Although T: D seemingly had higher production values than Korra or TMNT, so maybe they did get more time and money to do their thing properly.
I imagine the whole deal with LoK -> T:D -> TMNT probably went like

1) Activision tested waters with Legend of Korra. Despite what people say, it's still a fairly competently made game that could offer some enjoyment so long as you accepted it wouldn't offer Bayonetta level spectacle. Nowhere near Platinum's best or even Transformers, but it still had a combat system better than a lot of other games in the same price range. Maybe turned out to be relatively successful for how little money was put into it?

2) encouraged with the possible modest success of Legend of Korra, they gave a bit bigger a budget to Transformers and made it a full retail title. End result is a really good game that still clearly showed its low-ish budget, but still got more effort & money put into it that it felt a bit less content starved & a bit better put together & more polished than Korra.

3) Transformers sold like shit and Activision wasn't doing well on the licensed game front otherwise either -> abandon licenced game business -> slash TMNT's budget and send it to die as quickly as possible, despite the (lack of) quality or state of the game. End result is a game that felt even less polished & well thought out than Korra.

That's what I assume happened with that trio of Activision escapades.
 
Sigh. The primary reason I bought my Xbox One S over the holidays was to use it as a 4K Ultra BluRay player (still pissed at Sony for not including the drive on the Pro and haven't picked up the Pro yet), but I was looking forward to Scalebound. Looked like a neat game.
 
As a monstruously huge Kamiya fanboy and Platinum games lover, I feel really conflicted about this. On one hand, I worry about P*'s financial state if MS has been withholding payment for a long time, and it doesn't seem like they will ever see it now; plus this can't be good for Kamiya's morale in the short term. On the other, Scalebound was by far the game I was least interested in, from all that Kamiya has ever made, and I'm not shedding many tears over seeing it killed and Kamiya released to hopefully greener pastures.

I really hope this turns out to be for the best in the end, but only time will tell.

Kamiya's dream game is canceled, he seemingly has health issues and lots of people suddenly don't have a job. I fail to see how this will turn out to be for the best. For all we know it could be the end for one of the best studios out there.
 
That's a shame

Now i guess the number of xbox exclusives I have any interest in whatsoever went from three to two (Ori and the blind forest + Sunset Overdrive)

I hope Platinum survives. I really enjoyed Metal Gear Rising and am dying to play Nier:Automata
 
Putting aside the fact that the CG announcement trailer feature several dragon riders, pointing at least implicitly to co-op from the out-set, what element of the game as shown gives you the impression that it would have been a promising game of smaller, single-player scale?.

Yeah, annoyed how far baseless speculation is getting. "Things went to shit when MS suddenly pushed multiplayer onto them"

First fucking trailer:

https://youtu.be/GzGAYxaaDGs?t=1m25s

Multiplayer was also hinted verbally very early on, including at TGS and before then.

Kamiya too busy on Twitter?

Kamiya hasn't posted anything on Twitter since Dec 29. Uh, damn...
 
Wow, no joke, went to sleep thinking about when we would get more scale bound, wake up to new information, but not what I expected. To be honest, I'm not surprised based on MS' history on cancelling delayed games.
 
Poof goes any desire in owning an xbone or messing with the Win10 store for this thing.

Preeety much the only non-bc game I cared about on the system. Such sad news :(
 
Your leaving free money on the table if you think companies would accept a one-console future. EA has probably thought long and hard about making consoles. They have the games to rival the competition and they can do it. Choices are always gonna exist.

Companies would have no problem with that .
It takes billions to bring a console to the market and you hardly make profit off hardware .
There is no way any gaming only company would try it .

Plus how are they leaving money on the table .
 
Actually, I have heard from my friends at MS that the whole gaming division is under heavy scrutiny. I really wouldn't be surprised to see them drastically cut, and even more I highly expect the "Scorpio" to be delayed - that is a piece of information I have been keeping to myself to keep from being labeled a console warrior... We know there will be a new Forza this year, but everything else is up in the air...

Well damn, this sounds pretty alarming.
 
Can't believe they actually cancelled this after using it as one of their big showings at E3 several times.



Ouch.

I find that to be a bad excuse also. if the game was showing the way it was suppose to, even if they missed milestones, just looking at how badass the game was looking, there's no way it gets canceled. So I see it as a combo of the game just not looking very good, and missed milestones on top of that.
 
Actually, I have heard from my friends at MS that the whole gaming division is under heavy scrutiny. I really wouldn't be surprised to see them drastically cut, and even more I highly expect the "Scorpio" to be delayed - that is a piece of information I have been keeping to myself to keep from being labeled a console warrior... We know there will be a new Forza this year, but everything else is up in the air...

I'd expect some kind of Minecraft clone to "diversify" the third-party lineup if Scorpio actually releases this year.

Meanwhile, MS is sitting on all of Rare's properties which we may never see again. If it won't be a major "success", the game will never see release. So probably never see another Banjo, or Conker, or any number of titles. Instead, they have Rare working on a multiplayer (has to be), pirate simulator. Pray Sea of Thieves is a success, or Rare will be next studio canned.

I don't know what your sources are, but from the outside looking in... It certainly looks like they're trying to shift away from the gaming division.
 
Not trying to pile on. But listening to Gies over the years on podcasts, and the impression i got from his personality is what he says is correct. And he has to be correct no matter what... at least that's how he came across on Rebel FM. I don't even know if that podcast is still around.
 
Why would Microsoft purposely make goals that couldn't be reached to sabotage an IP they themselves own, and have heavily marketed at trade shows?

It's completely illogical.

Probably the idea was to set very ambitious miletone goals which will force a developer to work extra hard in a shorter amount of time in order to hit the milestones and get paid the full amount. If that developer manages to do all, MS wins: an exclusive game for their system for less money. If that developer fails to achieve those milestones, MS will cut funding and that dev will have to work even harder. But in this case the milestones were so absurd that development team was constantly in crunch mode and the game was still far from finished. End result: game canceled, MS spent tens of millions of dollars with nothing to show for it.
 
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