Scalebound cancelled [Platinum Games and Kamiya have commented]

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It hasnt been a good generation for Microsoft in regards to games tbh.

Their 2 biggest IPs, Halo and Gears of War, severely underperformed compared to their predecessors.

Halo MCC was a disaster. Halo 5 didnt even reach 1 million in its debut month at NPD (which is a huge decline compared to 3+ million debuts past entries had).

Gears of War 4 seems like a flop (relatively to past entries of course), it has done pretty bad in Europe and US. Microsoft didnt even shared numbers yet.

Then we have their new IPs: the biggest ones were definitely Quantum Break and Sunset Overdrive. Both underperformed. I would say Quantum Break situation is even worse, because that one was actually market and people had high hopes for it. In the end it floped commercially and critically.

Then we have all these cancelations. Project Spark, Scalebound, Fable Legends, Phantom Dust...

The only good thing out of this gen for them was the Forza series, especially the Horizon brand, which is doing very well (deservedly so).

I feel like Scorpio really needs to be a sucess for Microsoft, and the company itself is really counting on that. But it is hard to imagine how they will do that without attractive software. Halo and Gears are losing force and brand power each new year and new IPs from them either are getting canned or underperforms. They are in a very delicate situation.

Next year Sony is going all out with exclusives and partnerships and Nintendo is releasing a brand new console. If they dont work on their problems and nail Scorpio's reveal, I can see Xbox One agonizing a third place from now on.

How in the absolute fuck can Gears of War flop? In what world are we living in? Gears was so hot once.
 
Guys do you think history repeats itself?

Back in 1996 Hideki Kamiya is the director of Bio Hazard 2.
Early in 1997 producer Shinji Mikami decides to scrap the entire project and tell everybody to restart development of the game.



Skipping to the present.
Biohazard 2 Remake has been in development since the year 2015. Meanwhile, Hideki Kamiya is working on Scalebound as the creative director. Eventually, in early 2017 Microsoft executives decide to pull the plug off.
Does history have a sense of irony, or what?............

Look at the timing of the project-cancellation early 1997 - early 2017
 
Has anyone checked up on Kamiya?
It's not looking good.
Yea, heard it's been canned. Super rough development, milestones missed, payments stopped. Kamiya stressed as hell.
Heard he took time off for his mental health, yea :-/
JZqRyRp.jpg
 
This is not any other industry. Their competition will eventually put out their games, even if it's a struggle. While in many other industries, you cancel a project if it doesn't meet milestones, gaming is different because of all the passion among fans. When Sony struggles for ten years with The Last Guardian, even though they have no chance of making their money back, giving up at the first sign of a problem, like Microsoft seems to be doing, makes you look bad in comparison. They look like fucking quitters.
No, it's pretty much exactly the same as evidenced by the hundreds of cancelled fan favourite titles down the years.
 
Depends how much more money you need to put in before it releases. But yeah, i don't understand the decision either. It must have been a shit game. Thats the only explanation

Not really. Like, it would have had to be completely unplayable, Big Rigs tier garbage for Microsoft to see no return as a better alternative to some return.
 
Yeah games get cancelled all the time but isn't it a bit concerning that some of the most high profile cancellations as of late came from Microsoft. I don't even think that Sony or Nintendo has cancelled a publicly announced game since the beginning of this gen.

Deep Down has been MIA, but your point still stands.
 
This fits MS to a tee. MS management have been forcing developers to incorporate things like Kinect, games as a service, free to play, co-op multi player, etc) into new games. When those things don't work out, it's always the development team who are blamed for bad reviews and disappointing sales.

I don't understand this comment. If i tell you to build me a pool with a waterfall and hot tub and you sign a contract, go way over budget, take twice as long, the hot tub doesn't work and the waterfall keeps breaking it's my fault for forcing you to build that stuff? In what world do we live in where "not holding up your end of the contract" in considered acceptable and we start blaming the other side? this is worse then trophies for participation, but hey that's probably what cause it. I'm old school If I'm paid to do something and i agree to it, I better dam well produce or i deserve the downfall.
 
I have no idea about Quantum Break. I love Remedy and am really enjoying that game but man things like the awful tv series stuff in it feels like such an absurd waste of money, I have no idea why MS funded that.

QB is probably one of the last remnants of the "TV TV TV" era of Mattrick.
 
I'll echo the thoughts of Scalebound not looking great whenever they showed it, but I didn't think it looked so bad that I could see a cancellation coming. Disappointing.
 
At the end of the day, if Platinum got shutdown. Would anything of value honestly be lost? Their quality is all over the map.
Are you REALLY asking this seriously? This is a development studio filled with people who are responsible of creating games like Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta, Vanquish, Resident Evil 2 and such. Those are objectively genre-topping and some even genre defining games. Of course it's a huge loss if such developers lose their jobs and possibly scatter to the wind never to work together again if Platinum closed, no matter what you think of their low-budget Activision games and working on a Nintendo game that didn't turn out the best they could.
 
Man, That's just crazy. In development for at least 4 years and it's cancelled. Damn.

Hella curious to hear from Kamiya himself about this whole ordeal, but I imagine MS has already got them barred from discussing anything related from Scalebound.

Though you already know He ain't ever gonna let this shit down. Dude, has to be mad frustrated through out the whole development between him and MS.
 
As disappointed as I am, I do at least want to believe MS cancelled the game for a good reason. Maybe the project was a mess and it was causing problems for Kamiya and his team, or maybe MS just thought it was unsalvagable shit and decided to pull the plug, or maybe it was Platinum that still couldn't deliver after 4 years and MS wanted some results, or maybe it was something else entirely.

Who knows at this point, but I'm curious to see the post-mortems on this when and if they ever happen. As far as the future of Xbox goes, I think they are fine but I do hope they have some stuff up their sleeves for E3. The standard trio of Halo/Gears/Forza is still quality imo but they are going to need more than that this year.

I'm honestly more worried about Platinum though, Nier looks great but I doubt it will sell like hot cakes, I hope they get picked up for some more projects sooner rather than later.
 
Releasing a bad game than canceling it is better than nothing, right?

The Last Guardian was very likely also a bad game at one point, and far behind budged.

Yet they pushed on and released something special, if far from perfect.

Cancelling games left and right the moment they run into a problem is weak when your competition does so much better
 
Yeah games get cancelled all the time but isn't it a bit concerning that some of the most high profile cancellations as of late came from Microsoft. I don't even think that Sony or Nintendo has cancelled a publicly announced game since the beginning of this gen.
Yeah it is and it spells out that maybe Xbox is hurting financially which is what I meant initially. Just because they're backed by a massive company like Microsoft doesn't mean they don't have their own financial targets to hit and stay on. Xbox is hurting bad and Microsoft's money isn't a catch all to appease us as fans.
 
Yeah games get cancelled all the time but isn't it a bit concerning that some of the most high profile cancellations as of late came from Microsoft. I don't even think that Sony or Nintendo has cancelled a publicly announced game since the beginning of this gen.
And Nintenfo was on the Wii U

Not even TMS#FE

i repeat. The Wii U
 
QB is probably one of the last remnants of the "TV TV TV" era of Mattrick.

It cost them so much fucking money.

I have no doubt that when Microsoft looked at how much they spent on that game, particularly the TV show and marketing, vs those sales figures they got some serious reservations.
 
Not really. Like, it would have had to be completely unplayable, Big Rigs tier garbage for Microsoft to see no return as a better alternative to some return.

That depends, if they have to put another $20 million in order to finish the game that they know will never be profitable, at one point it's just not worth it anymore

The real issue is that it should not have taken this long to figure out
 
I feel like Phil is a good guy working in a nightmare of corporate politics and red tape. I'm surprised he hasn't jumped out.

Sounds like the reasons why Ed Fries left MS years ago.

So I just to go out to this green field and do what I thought was right. It either would work or it wouldn't. And it worked pretty well. The reason I left was Xbox got really big and it was like being back at Office again. [Laughs.] There was all this pressure.

Even if you watch now, like, Phil Spencer's speech yesterday [at GDC] -- Phil's a great guy, he's doing a really difficult job. "Okay, now, one Windows is going to run across everything, across Xbox, across your phone, across all these other things." [Laughs.] I would not work in that environment. I just know it's incredibly political and an incredible set of strategic decisions rather than -- I just want to make cool games, right? And a cool game machine, right? I don't care about what Windows teams' goals, or the phone team's goals
 
How in the absolute fuck can Gears of War flop? In what world are we living in? Gears was so hot once.

It didn't "flop" it's just not selling what it once did. It's why you have the service model for those games. It attempts to keep the players who have it "locked in" and offers various ways for them to spend more money.
 
Resident Evil 2
Devil May Cry
Viewtiful Joe
Okami
Bayonetta
The Wonderful 101

Kamiya's directorial history is ludicrously high quality. Would have loved to try Scalebound.
 
Sony and Nintendo also cancel games.

Please when what games did Sony cancel that were announced, and shown to the public?

Same with Nintendo? The only one I can think of from Nintendo in recent years is the launch title for Wii U, that had aliens and first person shooting, dont remember the name of it.

And Sony this generation cancelled stig's game which as unannounced, and unknown to the public.

Would love to hear what games both have cancelled this past gen.
 
Yeah it is and it spells out that maybe Xbox is hurting financially which is what I meant initially. Just because they're backed by a massive company like Microsoft doesn't mean they don't have their own financial targets to hit and stay on. Xbox is hurting bad and Microsoft's money isn't a catch all to appease us as fans.

It's been like that since the Xbox division began.
 
People are really getting at Platinum for a couple of bad Activision games. It's a shame.

I cannot think of a game that had this kind of showing being cancelled by any platform holder in recent years. I am struggling to think of any game from any publisher that has been cancelled. Sleeping dogs was one, but that was never really shown when it was with Activation. This was a game that was shown numerous times, had youtube videos, twitter and other social media advertising it.
 
I'll echo the thoughts of Scalebound not looking great whenever they showed it, but I didn't think it looked so bad that I could see a cancellation coming. Disappointing.

Remember it's also compounded by the fact that MS has not done well to cultivate a userbase that is interested in Japanese games. I mean go and read twitter replies to Phil or other Xbox people and you'll see a lot of fans are saying they are fine with it and happy with just Halo and Gears.

I think at some point MS realized that this wouldn't sell to their base even if it turned out good, but still distinctly Japanese. But in trying to change it to something that would appeal to their heavily Western userbase, it lost its identity.
 
Resident Evil 2
Devil May Cry
Viewtiful Joe
Okami
Bayonetta
The Wonderful 101

Kamiya's directorial history is ludicrously high quality. Would have loved to try Scalebound.

What suck is that it's four years down the drain where he could have been working on something else.
 
It is not hard to understand at all. Like I said, you have distorted important categorical information into a soup that paints an incorrect picture. Again, the basis of your argument still stands if you post



This way, you're comparing new announcements to new announcements and still demonstrating (accurately) how dire Microsoft's announcement-to-release ratio is, while showing how Sony actually managed to deliver on it's E3 2014 announcements.

All I'm saying is, the way you originally parsed your data would not pass in any Business Statistics class I've taken.

Just to clear up something, four of the nine MS titles were announced/shown in 2013: Project Spark (released though), Below, Fable Legends, Halo 5. So 5 of the 9 were brand new.

Since I see you two keep going back and forth, but nobody actually factchecking that part
 
It is not hard to understand at all. Like I said, you have distorted important categorical information into a soup that paints an incorrect picture. Again, the basis of your argument still stands if you post



This way, you're comparing new announcements to new announcements and still demonstrating (accurately) how dire Microsoft's announcement-to-release ratio is, while showing how Sony actually managed to deliver on it's E3 2014 announcements.

All I'm saying is, the way you originally parsed your data would not pass in any Business Statistics class I've taken.

I get that you're saying the comparison should be between games that were new announcements at E3. I get that part.

The part i don't think you're understanding is i'm comparing both conferences as a whole of what they decided to show, not just the new stuff. I think it's important to see that Sony focused on already announced titles, while Microsoft went ahead with showing games that were far from completion. While your list is omitting that part.
 
I understand the "If it no longer makes financial sense then cancel" argument that some are posting, but if the delays and budget blowout is a direct result of Microsoft meddling, then it's a problem.

Yes, Platinum has a 50/50 strike rate with the quality of their games.

But if there's one thing Platinum is pretty consistent with, is getting games out quickly within a small budget...unless a publisher meddles, like here and StarFox. Regardless of its final quality, this is the kind of game Microsoft needed to diversify its portfolio and give an expanded audience of gamers a reason to consider jumping into the ecosystem.

Reducing that diversity does them zero favours.
 
The game was probably just not coming together very well and after ReCore, I don't think MS wanted to have another flop on their hands.
 
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