Scalebound cancelled [Platinum Games and Kamiya have commented]

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Famassu said:
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.
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Dont listen to him he is a troll
 
Papacheeks said:
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.
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That was a ubi game. Sony have cut ties with some indie devs but those games are still coming out.
 
DrkSage said:
I also have saw the trailer posted there ( same one you posted earlier) and it was all speculations with no concrete answer. Just because a trailer shows more dragons appearing to help him didn't mean it was going to have co-op multiplayer. Nobody saw Assassins creed brotherhood trailer and said "wow assassins helping ezio! Assassins creed brotherhood will have co-op!"
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Oddly enough, people did see the end of Scalebound's trailer and assumed it was hinting at multiplayer (multiple dragons against a single big enemy, different colors tied to different players). Several articles at the time of E3 mentioned this. This was perfectly consistent to what we heard/saw the following year. A better source of information was mentioned by someone who replied to me, but I don't want to look for and listen to a podcast where Phil Spencer goes as far to say that Microsoft would be handling multiplayer because that's what they were good at. I suppose this is the difference between speculation and baseless speculation.
 
SomedayTheFire said:
No, it's pretty much exactly the same as evidenced by the hundreds of cancelled fan favourite titles down the years.
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I was specifically talking about announced first/second party games. When, as a platform holder, you show off a game at a conference, you make a commitment to people who will buy your platform to play that game. Sure, occasionally things don't work out. But why should I as a consumer ever trust that they will actually release the games they are promising? Why even watch Microsoft's E3 conference, when there is a nearly 50 % chance that any game shown, which is not called Halo or Forza, doesn't come out?
 
Games being cancelled isn't something new, but this far into development is the real shitshow.

Moze said:
People are really getting at Platinum for a couple of bad Activision games. It's a shame.
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Yeah I don't care about those, of course they're going to be worse considering how fast they are churned out.
 
VincentMatts said:
It isnt a flop. Hes pulling stuff out of his ass
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Not a flop by any means, but it certainly isn't anywhere near as popular as Gears used to be.

It's so weird to me. Gears took off and became a worldwide name. Gears 3 was an event. The end of the trilogy. Then the series is revitalized with Gears 4, people should be pumped... yet the world at large didn't seem to care.

Halo's grand return with Halo 4 was extremely hyped. The whole world was so excited to get back into Master Chief's boots. Gears just didn't get that hype for some reason.

I guess most people felt satisfied with the series ending at 3.
 
Collingwood said:
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.
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All for Xbox gamers. All for the Team
 
Spyder_Monkey said:
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.
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Rime? Stig's new IP at Santa Monica?
 
icespide said:
QtX2g1B.png
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Lol


OT this is extremely sad, I was really looking forward to this game
 
Guys Nintendo didn't even cancel games on the friken Wii U...
Microsoft never really gave themselves a chance to expand into new ips and market them accordingly.
So sad as I was gonna buy scalebound and an Xbox One.
 
Papacheeks said:
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.
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Sure, Sony haven't been as egregious as Microsoft in their public handling of their games but the point is software development is volatile. This stuff happens. You could be making this dope ass thing and someone beats you to the market and it shuts down your team/studio (SSM scaling down) or you sink X amount of money into a project you know won't make X^2 back but end up costing Y to ship. These things happen to all publishers. This is just a horribly public example.
 
VincentMatts said:
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
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I just don't see it; Platinum doesn't have a history of overtly bad games made within their own IPs, they've been known to be incredibly efficient and Scalebound, whilst ambitious, wasn't a "you can do anything!" type game. There's more evidence of Microsoft meddling than Platinum incompetency.

But this is all assumptions. I just personally think this is more on Microsoft than Platinum. They seem to be afraid of diversifying, especially after Quantum Break failed to set the world on fire (did anyone think it ever would?).
 
Holy shit this was canceled for good? Glad I didn't buy that mispriced Xbox one in hopes to play this game and sunset overdrive.

Im not buying a console for just 1 game.


Man Microsoft has completely failed this generation in all aspects haven't they?
 
Double Donut said:
Not a flop by any means, but it certainly isn't anywhere near as popular as Gears used to be.

It's so weird to me. Gears took off and became a worldwide name. Gears 3 was an event. The end of the trilogy. Then the series is revitalized with Gears 4, people should be pumped... yet the world at large didn't seem to care.

Halo's grand return with Halo 4 was extremely hyped. The whole world was so excited to get back into Master Chief's boots. Gears just didn't get that hype for some reason.

I guess most people felt satisfied with the series ending at 3.
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There were a lot more consoles sold when gears 3 came out then there are Xbox ones right now. The 360 was the console everyone had. That isn't the case now with Xbox one. That plays a huge factor in games sales.
 
ElBoxyBrown said:
I'm skeptical of this cuz why would MS waste 3 years if their goals were impossible? A that wasted time and money. It doesn't add up.
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The game was approved at the start of a new cycle and a different software strategy, bam! 3 years passes and the game is still far off from finishing, then management decides to look at budgets and start a new software strategy based on connectivity between W10 devices and games as services.

They can keep spending money on software they don't believe anymore, or kill it using impossible milestones to save money and focus on other kind of software.
 
demogorgon said:
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.
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Maybe consider that MS presents a contract where they say they can introduce new milestones, then introduce a very short term milestone with very high requirements and say that they will provide a very small budget to do so, technically the contractor agreed to that but is it really their fault at that point if requirements change unrealistically?

Microsoft did exactly that:

How A Small Studio's Chance At The Big Time Died At Microsoft's Doorstep

After some heavy-duty conversations in the spring of 2014, the two companies walked away with a deal: Darkside would get a $5 million budget to build a multiplayer-only reboot of Phantom Dust, complete with a spectator mode, tournaments, and a complicated replay system allowing players to share files, according to one person familiar with the original pitch. The initial plan was to make it a competitive online sport, along the lines of Hearthstone and League of Legends. They gave it the codename Babel.
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No more than a week after they’d signed the contract, according to several ex-Darkside employees, Microsoft’s team came back to the studio with a new request: they wanted a single-player campaign. “They decided that fans were gonna want a single-player game,” said a person who worked on the project. “But they weren’t going to change the budget or the timeframe.”

Suddenly, what was once a $5 million multiplayer reboot of Phantom Dust had become a $5 million multiplayer reboot of Phantom Dust with a six-hour single-player story mode attached. That meant Darkside would need more designers, more artists, and more programmers, all of which equated to extra time and money that they didn’t have. Still, employees say they were committed to pulling it off. This was their first solo project. They wanted to prove they were good enough to do it. According to one Darkside source, their tentative plan was to build a fun vertical slice—a playable and demonstrable chunk of the game—and use it to persuade Microsoft into giving them more money.
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Darkside soldiered on, and full development started around August of last year. As the months went on, things got shakier. Microsoft’s demands for the game increased, and the pressure got worse and worse as Redmond kept asking for new things, Darkside sources say. Microsoft wanted a longer single-player campaign; they wanted various features added and changed; they wanted Darkside to help contribute card art to the accompanying mobile game Microsoft had planned. “This kind of focus change happened on a nearly monthly basis,” said a person who worked on the game.

“They asked for things pretty quickly,” said a second person close to the studio. “We kept telling them, ‘We cannot make this game for the budget you want.’”

In the fall of last year, another obstacle popped up: one of Microsoft’s creative directors, who Darkside sources described as integral to Phantom Dust’s success, left the company. His role was never re-filled, which hurt Darkside a lot—producers at the studio had to communicate with Microsoft’s creative team on a daily basis, and he had been one of their most important connections in Redmond.
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While Kamiya's known for making high quality games, isn't Scalebound on a much larger scale than anything he's previously done? Isn't it also done that Platinum is inexperienced or poorly structured for open world content tourism type stuff?

Playing devil's advocate here.
 
Screw the haters I like Star Fox Zero. It is a fun, low budget sequel to Star Fox 64. Outside of no controller options, it's biggest issue was not enough on-rails levels.
 
gaming_noob said:
What are these 17 games Spencer is talking about?

Sea of Thieves
Halo 6
Halo Wars 1 Remake
Halo Wars 2
Forza 7
Forza Horizon 4
Gears of War 5

Blehhh. Better be some megatons.
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Even that list looks terrible.

Out of 7 games only one is a New IP, the rest are iterations of old IP.

Credit where credits due, at least Sony takes a risk now and again. Who knows, maybe Scalebound would have been a sleeper hit or at least broke even.
 
VincentMatts said:
There were a lot more consoles sold when gears 3 came out then there are Xbox ones right now. The 360 was the console everyone had. That isn't the case now with Xbox one. That plays a huge factor in games sales.
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No, that has little to do with the extent of Gears' fall.
 
EatChildren said:
Resident Evil 2 - 89
Devil May Cry - 94
Viewtiful Joe - 93
Okami - 93
Bayonetta - 90
The Wonderful 101 - 78
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Look at that list guys. Most other game directors wish they had such track record. With Devil May Cry in particular he created an entire genre of games. That number is the metacritic score btw.

You really believe it was just Kamiya's fault?
 
Aggelos said:
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
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I don't think it's ironic how Kamiya has a 20 year history of canceled games, studios, and IPs. There's a very clear pattern here that a lot of people are ignoring.
 
Kill3r7 said:
Kind of sad to see that today is the most love Scalebound has gotten on the internet since it was first announced in 2014.
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The game is a much bigger deal today than it was when first announced. Most people expected to play the game by the end of the year @ 4K resolution on their Scorpio. And many PC gamers expected to do the same on Win10. Both of those prospects didn't exist when the game was first announced with just a cgi trailer and not much else.
 
hydrophilic attack said:
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.
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Are these really things people care about? Who gives a shit if a giant conglomerate quits unappealing initiatives? Companies aren't people. Stop trying to anthropomorphize them. MS' problem isn't a moral character flaw, it's that they're running out of avenues to make a pitch for their product.
 
Damn shame. Was hoping this would be a good game that I could enjoy. I even thought the gameplay shown was pretty interesting. Don't know if it was Microsoft, Platinum or both, but it's a real shame that this fell through.
 
SFenton said:
This is ridiculously stupid. It's like saying it would have been good if Microsoft published Two Worlds. Sure, shit game, but it diversified, right?

It would ultimately diminish confidence in MS's ability to deliver quality games, regardless of taste.
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As apposed to diminishing the confidence of them seeing through a AAA game outside their flagship franchisees to the end?



I don't like JRPGs, but if MS put out Scalebound and it ended up being bad? What's the ripple effect on games they might fund in the future?
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Nothing much since they've always been conservative in the AAA space. Scalebound and SO were exceptions obviously.
 
Spyder_Monkey said:
It's been like that since the Xbox division began.
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That's the corporate nature of Microsoft though isn't it. There are some fantastic essays on the make up of that company that are a fascinating look into big software companies. They're eye opening to what Xbox can and cannot do and it's unfortunate.

hydrophilic attack said:
I was specifically talking about announced first/second party games. When, as a platform holder, you show off a game at a conference, you make a commitment to people who will buy your platform to play that game. Sure, occasionally things don't work out. But why should I as a consumer ever trust that they will actually release the games they are promising? Why even watch Microsoft's E3 conference, when there is a nearly 50 % chance that any game shown, which is not called Halo or Forza, doesn't come out?
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I feel you, it's probably a tough position for Xbox to be in. They needed heavy hitters in 2014, they needed core Internet fans on their side as they missed the mark spectacularly the year before. What better other than a cult studio like Platinum for them to say "look, we're back guys". It went out way too early and they probably set the bar way too high. It sucks, for everyone. For us as consumers, Platinum as the developers and it sucks for Xbox themselves. They'll be taking this on the chin, sinking the money into something with no revenue but they've obviously done the math and cut ties rather unfortunately it seems.
 
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