When Scalebound cancellation news broke, gamers worldwide were shocked to see the monster-fighting adventure canned despite the positive reception the reveal trailer was met with. While we’ve had tid-bits about cancellation reasons in the past, PlatinumGames boss Atsushi Inaba is breaking it down even further.
“Both sides failed,” said Inaba in a recent interview with VGC. “Scalebound didn’t do all of the things that we needed to do as a developer. Watching fans getting angry at Microsoft over the cancellation wasn’t easy for us to watch. Because the reality is, when any game in development can’t get released it’s because both sides failed.”
Inaba added, “I think there are areas where we could’ve done better and I’m sure there are areas that Microsoft as a publishing partner wish that they could’ve done better. Because nobody wants a game to be cancelled.”
He then went on to discuss the lessons learned from the entire ordeal and all the disappointment it left behind in its wake:
“At the bare minimum, it’s unique for us as a title in so much as we feel that we didn’t do all of the things that we needed to do as a developer. There were a lot of painful lessons, but that helped us grow as a studio. We obviously can’t go into details about it, because there are rules of engagement as a developer. We want to make sure that the publisher who gave us a chance to make a game in the first place isn’t treated poorly. The truth is, we don’t like to see Microsoft take the brunt of the fan ire because game development is hard and both sides learned lessons, for sure.”
A premature reveal was also partly to blame, a lesson many studios seem to be learning as of late. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting Scalebound really ever, but at least we know the team is busy working on new projects and they will be self-published. Lesson learned!
Published: May 7, 2019 08:27 pm