Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, has given an interview to Japanese site GameWatch, in which he discusses the motives that lead to the cancellation of the long-anticipated Xbox One exclusive Scalebound, which was revealed back in January. Spencer points at the fact that the project started to reach an impossible scale, with developer Platinum Games seeing that they could not meet the huge expectations that fans had. That lead to both Microsoft and Platinum to decide to cancel the project.
Entering in details, Spencer considers that perhaps the game was announced too soon, as that allowed fans to give constant feedback on what they expected to see. At that point the project still didn’t have marked the objectives on what they were trying to achieve, and Platinum Games tried to follow all the fans’ suggestions to make the biggest and most complex experience possible.
However, that lead to the studio setting impossible standards that in the end could not be met. Acknowledging this, Microsoft and Platinum decided to end the project instead of releasing a disappointing game.
Developed by a Platinum Games team lead by legendary game director Hideki Kamiya (Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry), Scalebound was an open-world RPG that Kamiya teased as the biggest game of his career in terms of world scale and player experience.
While the Scalebound cancellation was a disappointment everyone involved, Platinum Games has recently achieved unexpected success with Nier: Automata for PS4.
