While there were plenty of rumors of trouble in the development process of Scalebound, many were blindsided by the news on Monday that the game was cancelled entirely. Developer PlatinumGames has mostly had a very solid track record, especially when Hideki Kamiya is involved, and now they have issued their statement about the cancellation of Scalebound.
2016 definitely wasn’t the best of years for PlatinumGames as both Star Fox Zero and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants and Manhattan were not very well received at all, but Scalebound definitely had a lot of people excited.
There have been plenty of comments already about the cancellation, but the following is the statement directly from PlatinumGames’ blog on their official website.
We’re sorry to say that on January 9, 2017, Microsoft Studios announced the cancellation of Scalebound. We are very disappointed things ended up this way, especially since we know many of our fans were looking forward to this game as much as we were.
Going forward, we will strive to continue delivering high-quality games to you, starting with NieR:Automata in March, and including products like GRANBLUE FANTASY Project Re:Link and LOST ORDER in the future.
We will keep working hard to meet your expectations and we look forward to your continued support!
President and CEO
Kenichi Sato
This response is pretty much what you would expect from a developer that just cancelled one of its games, while also using it as a way to promote their upcoming games. Scalebound was definitely their most talked about game in development, but NieR: Automata now takes that title. Oddly enough, while Scalebound was exclusive to Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, NieR: Automata is exclusive to PS4 and PC for now.
Maybe Scalebound will find new life sometime in the future, but for now PlatinumGames appears to be moving forward with their other upcoming projects instead.
