Scalebound cancelled [Platinum Games and Kamiya have commented]

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Wonder if this'll be kinda like the opposite of what happened to MGR. Instead of switching to PG for development, Microsoft is switching from...
And give it to Rare, lol
 
I hope they've landed another gig whole this was going on. This and TMNT were some serious stumbles, and while Nier is looking to turn out pretty solid, I hope they'll have something solid lined up after its launch.

Hell, maybe Sony can swoop with a gig from them? They're usually pretty quick on the rebound.
 
This sucks. People work hard on these development projects, really hard.

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Well at least Platinum gained some experience developing an open world game for the first time.Hopefully they will use this knowledge on another project some day.
 
The fact that they contracted Platinum for Bayo 2 after w101 was the biggest Bomba of last gen maybe.

Unless bayo 2 was announced before w101 already came out, I'm not sure

Post Bayo2 interviews they clearly stated they started working on W101 while trying to get a publisher for Bayo2, Nintendo knew early and didnt care, only after everyone said no, Nintendo said yes.
Basically Platinum most likely got a bad contract since they were the last resort. Really doesn't help Platinum
 
If PlatinumGames will ever going to revisit this project I hope they do it with a whole new main lead. The game mechanics looked promising but the douchebag protagonist looked cringey as hell and kinda killed any interest I had for this.
 
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

So we're supposed to believe that Microsoft spent god knows how much funding this over the course of several years then intentionally spiked it...why? Just to keep people from having game to play on their Xbox One?

If they poison pilled it, it was because it wasn't going to be good enough - and judging by some of the stuff they've released - ReCore for example - that's a fairly low fucking bar to clear.
 
To the MS fans sitting here defending MS & trying to throw this at Platinum's feet - i'd really refrain from doing so if I were you. When the smoke clears & the articles about what really happened here get written, MS is gonna look even worse. This aint on Platinum.

Microsoft will look bad because they will never tell their side of the story. It is likely that Microsoft pulled some shady things but the bottom line is that milestones weren't met. I had a client in my line of work that was demanding as fuck. Literally working until 3 am for weeks on end to meet their demands. Update calls Sunday morning, deadlines later that afternoon.

It sucks but if you don't meet those deadlines, you'll (in my case, the company I work for) get fired. That's the way the world works. But let me tell you, if I sat down with you and had a beer and told you all about how bad that client sucks ass, you would believe me. What you probably wouldn't know about is about the demands placed on their employees internally, reorganizations that cause deadlines to be moved up, timelines that were agreed upon by the HPP (Highest Payed People), etc.

Luckily I no longer work on that client.
 
Why does everyone think that Nintendo is falling all over themselves to pay for more Platinum projects? Both W101 and Bayonetta 2 were commercial failures for Nintendo. Optimism is great, and I love Platinum as much as anyone, but Nintendo is an extremely fiscally conservative company; where did this notion that Nintendo wants to continue throwing money at commercial flops come from?
They continued to promote the Bayonetta brand well after the game's launch and collaborated on a first party property. The narrative that Bayonetta 2 was a commercial failure is also not really based on anything. If it were the total bomb people like to make it out to be, Nintendo wouldn't have reprinted the game.

More funny are the "OMG you know to do Sony!!" You know, a first party with a history of shuttering studios and close to zero working relationship with Platinum...who's also focused most of their developer focus on the west.
 
All this drama is freiking annoying.... just speak up already or say nothing. All this does is stir up shit without even saying anything factual & concrete.

Someone should really do an extensive write up on this.

I'm sure no one is doing a write up because they're worried Microsoft is gonna stop sending them review copies
 
If PlatinumGames will ever going to revisit this project I hope they do it with a whole new main lead. The game mechanics looked promising but the douchebag protagonist looked cringey as hell and kinda killed any interest I had for this.

I hated his headphones. Supposedly it was originally a girl protag.

Thank you Phill Spencer! I'm not sure how cancelling one of the most anticipated Xbox exclusive is better for xbox gamers, but I will take your word for it.

It has already been mentioned, but I think the idea is that instead of funding a game that wasn't where they wanted it to be for another year or more they could put those funds in to games like Crackdown and Sea of Thieves. How much weight you'd like to put behind that line of reasoning is up to you.
 
I'm not 'creating a narrative' so come off it, never did I say 'nobody could possibly hav eliked what they saw' or anything to include you if you somehow magically thoguht it looked amazing, what I'm saying is that the overwhelming impressions people had were bad, and this is shit you can simply look up the threads for the E3 conferences, gamecom information, etc, and SEE people posting. The hype surrounding this game got lesser each time they showed it, because it did not look good to most people every time they did.
Well, you've got to understand that a part of that negativity came from concern trolls and console fanboys of other platforms who were butthurt that a Platinum game is coming exclusively to Xbox after they perhaps liked Bayonetta 1, 2, Vanquish and/or Wonderful 101. There's also the fact that hyper-negativity is a real thing in the Interwebz, where people just like to shit on things far more than they deserve to be shat on. The slightest of flaws in an unfinished game means the game will be worthless shit and can't possibly be good, hype deflated, cancel the party. There's also a pretty vocal anti-Platinum force who like to come to all Platinum threads to say how Platinum's games are actually pretty shitty and nothing special, no matter if we are talking about a somewhat rough looking upcoming game like Scalebound, the actual shit games like TMNT, a character action game masterpiece like Bayonetta or third person shooter greatness of Vanquish.

Still, you can't say that the game looked like a total disaster. So a big boss was didn't look super exciting to fight against and there were framerate issues, but all the individual parts looked & sounded like they could form an entertaining whole with some more work, balancing & polish but into it. As I said framerate problems can some of the last things that are focused on during the polishing phase when content is locked and the big boss is the kind of stuff that can really change with game balance tweaking and when all gameplay systems are fully implemented so your actions aren't as limited as an early-ish demo of a really unfinished build of the game might make it look like.

As a comparison the Duscae demo of FFXV, 1,5 years before the release of the game, had this big boss to fight that wasn't all that fun because you were missing a lot of key features so it just dragged on forever with a very limited, repetitive gameplay loop. While it's still not perfect in the finalized game either, it's still far more enjoyable with the full arsenal & gameplay features of the final game. I saw similar potential in Scalebound. They had already shown a fairly robust combat system but with Platinum games there is always more than some surface level live demonstration shows. You get new skills, weapons, special attacks as you progress in the game that can make the game feel like a whole different game vs. relative simplicity of the early game. I doubt they even showed half of what the game's combat would offer in all their short demos we saw, like the dragon <-> MC combo stuff was never shown to public.

The difference is Horizon is showing really well and development is apparently going very smooth.

MS knows something we don't, and analysts/critics who see more than we do have been worried about Scalebound for a while based on actually seeing it. The game had serious issues, they wouldn't have cancelled it at this point if it was going to come out this year and actually be any good. This game had to either be really far behind, really disjointed, or so bad that releasing it as a headlining exclusive would hurt the Xbox brand more than canceling it.
It's showing well because its been in some level of development from, what, 2010 onwards or something. Sony gave Guerrilla proper time to fully gestate it from early vague ideas and early prototype testing with a small team into a fully fleshed out, polished product with as few compromises as possible and didn't show it to the public until it was already really far along into development. They even gave Guerrilla the money to set up a second dev studio to work on the game. The game has had something like 6-7 years of work put into it. Even though much of that was with a very small team for the first couple of years, that can help with the full production to go much smoother when they've got most of the ideas somewhat fleshed out and nailed down as they ramp up development and enter full production vs. having to go from zero to completion in 3 years (including prototyping and other early development stuff and the full production phase of development with all hands on deck)
 
I think big publishers get carried away trying to appeal to the very small but very vocal video game community where Platinum Games are highly regarded.

It's because these small communities can reverberate and become extremely loud. Like GAF itself isn't representative of the overall market. What is however is extremely focused consumers who are also very noisy about what they are passionate about. Upset or please groups like this and these are the types of people that get things moving on Twitter / Facebook / Social Media etc.

It's no secret Sony and other major publishers use GAF for example as a testing ground / barometer on tons of things
 
Post Bayo2 interviews they clearly stated they started working on W101 while trying to get a publisher for Bayo2, Nintendo knew early and didnt care, only after everyone said no, Nintendo said yes.
Basically Platinum most likely got a bad contract since they were the last resort. Really doesn't help Platinum
Source? we all know Bayonetta 2 was in development for other systems before being oficially published but It worked out pretty well in the end for them .

Specially after this news
 
It's because these small communities can reverberate and become extremely loud. Like GAF itself isn't representative of the overall market. What is however is extremely focused consumers who are also very noisy about what they are passionate about. Upset or please groups like this and these are the types of people that get things moving on Twitter / Facebook / Social Media etc.

It's no secret Sony and other major publishers use GAF for example as a testing ground / barometer on tons of things
Knack 2 baby!!! We did it gaf
 
So nothing. Lots of reactionary posts in here.



I mean. I guess... So, you're just speculating? Nothing at all concrete?

We've got the following insiders/mods in this very thread suggesting or corroborating a GaaS future for MS: SneakersSO, Shinobi, Nirolak, and Stump. ZhugeEX on Twitter as well. Plenty of smoke to raise suspicion.
 
It's showing well because its been in some level of development from, what, 2010 onwards or something. Sony gave Guerilla proper time to fully gestate it from early vague ideas and early prototype testing with a small team into a fully fleshed out, polished product with as few compromises as possible and didn't show it to the public until it was already really far along into development. They even gave Guerilla the money to set up a second dev studio to work on the game. The game has had something like 6-7 years of work put into it. Even though much of that was with a very small team for the first couple of years, that can help with the full production to go much smoother when they've got most of the ideas somewhat fleshed out and nailed down as they ramp up development and enter full production vs. having to go from zero to completion in 3 years (including prototyping and other early development stuff and the full production phase of development with all hands on deck)

Scalebound was being pitched to publishers on the Wii.
 
If PlatinumGames will ever going to revisit this project I hope they do it with a whole new main lead. The game mechanics looked promising but the douchebag protagonist looked cringey as hell and kinda killed any interest I had for this.

Even if they wanted to i don't think they could use anything from Scalebound since the IP belongs to MS.Which is good since i also hated the MC.
 
No worries, all that money is getting funneled right into some more Halo, Gears and Forza. Enjoy!

Haven't invested in those franchises this gen, but I would in a second over Scalebound based on the gameplay we have been shown.

I don't get the outrage. I understand when people were pissed about Black Tusks game being canceled, it was an unknown and reportedly good. This is the opposite. The demos were so awful. And if the development and relationship came to this, then it was only going to get worse, not better.

Microsoft's first party is lacking right now. But the answer to that isn't to release shit.
 
Why does everyone think that Nintendo is falling all over themselves to pay for more Platinum projects? Both W101 and Bayonetta 2 were commercial failures for Nintendo. Optimism is great, and I love Platinum as much as anyone, but Nintendo is an extremely fiscally conservative company; where did this notion that Nintendo wants to continue throwing money at commercial flops come from?

W101 yes, but Bayo 2 was not a commercial failure. As far as I'm concerned it sold well for being a console exclusive on a system with a small userbase.
 
Post Bayo2 interviews they clearly stated they started working on W101 while trying to get a publisher for Bayo2, Nintendo knew early and didnt care, only after everyone said no, Nintendo said yes.
Basically Platinum most likely got a bad contract since they were the last resort. Really doesn't help Platinum

A bad contract? What? Nintendo fully funded both titles. And they are still on really good terms.

While with MS...
 
To the MS fans sitting here defending MS & trying to throw this at Platinum's feet - i'd really refrain from doing so if I were you. When the smoke clears & the articles about what really happened here get written, MS is gonna look even worse. This aint on Platinum.

If you already know what happened why don't you just tell us instead doing the "I know things you don't know but I'm not going to tell you, I just want you to know that I know" game?
 
We've got the following insiders/mods in this very thread suggesting or corroborating a GaaS furture for MS: SneakersSO, Shinobi, Nirolak, and Stump. ZhugeEX on Twitter as well. Plenty of smoke to raise suspicion.

I believe ZhugeEX was corroborated by Shinobi in this thread to an extent as well.
 
So we're supposed to believe that Microsoft spent god knows how much funding this over the course of several years then intentionally spiked it...why? Just to keep people from having game to play on their Xbox One?

If they poison pilled it, it was because it wasn't going to be good enough - and judging by some of the stuff they've released - ReCore for example - that's a fairly low fucking bar to clear.

Priorities change. CEO Nadella's (who became CEO about the time Scalebound was announced) focus is on services. That's company-wide. For MS, tanking this game is not a huge expenditure if it doesn't fit with their agenda.

I don't see how MS is going to attract many exclusives after this though. If they really did purposefully screw Platinum, that's a pretty well-known studio to burn.
 
What won't MS cancel? Crackdown 3 and Sea of Thieves are definitely next. MS is on a cancelling spree. They got rid of Fable, Halo Megablocks, Phantom Dust.
 
Priorities change. CEO Nadella's (who became CEO about the time Scalebound was announced) focus is on services. That's company-wide. For MS, tanking this game is not a huge expenditure if it doesn't fit with their agenda.

I don't see how MS is going to attract many exclusives after this though. If they really did purposefully screw Platinum, that's a pretty well-known studio to burn.

Well that's the other thing, even if we accept that every game going forward is going to be a 'games as a service' - despite things like ReCore, Cuphead, Below, etc... then why would they alienate themselves from developers? They still need people to make those games...
 
I don't know what to think of the Xbox brand these days. They keep building themself up, just so they can crash with each of these cancelations.
 
What won't MS cancel? Crackdown 3 and Sea of Thieves are definitely next. MS is on a cancelling spree. They got rid of Fable, Halo Megablocks, Phantom Dust.

They can't cancel everything...

Regardless of whom is to blame, the state of the game etc. It's clear that MS didn't feel Scalebound was worth fighting for. I don't see them doing that for a game like Crackdown 3. It appears that things broke down pretty dramatically between PG and MS. A niche new IP from a Japanese developer...always going to be vulnerable to bad weather.

Crackdown is going to be okay...that's my feeling anyway.
 
We've got the following insiders/mods in this very thread suggesting or corroborating a GaaS future for MS: SneakersSO, Shinobi, Nirolak, and Stump. ZhugeEX on Twitter as well. Plenty of smoke to raise suspicion.

Honestly, I was following the thread pretty closely but must have missed all of that talk. 6000 posts is a lot to keep up on.
 
Nice input lol.

Where have you been? I'v been in the whole god damn thread. I bumped Shinobi's post because it was exactly with what i aligned with in where Microsoft has been heading.

Is that enough LOL explaining for you? Maybe look at my post history before trying to be cheeky.
 
To the MS fans sitting here defending MS & trying to throw this at Platinum's feet - i'd really refrain from doing so if I were you. When the smoke clears & the articles about what really happened here get written, MS is gonna look even worse. This aint on Platinum.

Eh, I don't own a Xbox, but the game never looked that appealing. I doubt the world will miss Scalebound.
 
As far as cancelling a game for no reason after investing so much money, Activision done just that with Sleeping Dogs, so it does happen. Sleeping dogs/True Crime was almost complete when they decided to cancel it.

Maybe marketing the game is the issue rather than the game itself? Maybe it was something Spencer didn't green light himself thus wasn't too interested in it.

I just find this news shocking. It's so weird to be promoting the game so much over 3 years and then cancel it.

Eh, I don't own a Xbox, but the game never looked that appealing. I doubt the world will miss Scalebound.

I will. It was the main reason I purchased an Xbox. Kamiya has never failed me in the 18 years I have been playing his games.
 
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