The Activision licensed games make a lot more sense when you consider they probably took those because they were relatively easy to complete and helped prop up active development on Scalebound, since reporters with sources involved in Scalebound's development state that Microsoft had halted payments and made unachievable milestones.
Generally-speaking, payments get halted when previously-agreed-upon milestones fail to be met. It can happen for any number of reasons, of course, including mismanagement of how many contracts can be handled at a given time, or tech issues when using an unfamiliar engine. We know that Scalebound got delayed twice, and was using the Unreal engine (which I don't think Platinum has used for any of their games prior), and over the course of its development, they've had eight or so games going through the pipeline.
In hindsight, these compounding together seem like a recipe for disaster - which is why the game got delayed before getting ultimately canceled at the start of this year. Considering the effect that delays, let alone cancelations, have on all involved parties, this sort of situation becomes
incredibly difficult to salvage.
I haven't looked at the teams involved, but I suspect this is probably part of the reason why we got Bayonetta and Vanquish ported to PC - to fill in work for those who were slated to work on the Scalebound, opting to go for the very safe option of porting some of their older games to PC (which is almost guaranteed to have a high return-on-investment).
This is very similar to what I believe happened with Inti Creates after the Mighty No. 9 debacle (3DS/Vita version development is ongoing still, I believe), where they were contracted for Bloodstained, but then replaced as its developer (as in, they're no longer involved in the development of the main game, though they are developing the prequel game still) - open space in contract scheduling means you allocate people to low-budget and safe projects, which I very much suspect is why we got Mighty Gunvolt Burst and Blaster Master Zero.