I still don't understand why MS canceled it.The game looked amazing.
I thought it looked cool till they showed multi player. It didn't understand why they suddenly added mp mode. It felt so forced.
Multiplayer/Co Op was shown off in the reveal trailer at the games first showing, it was there from the start.
You mean the 2015 one? When I saw it I wondered which direction the game will take. Well 2016 showed me not the right one. We haven't had seen much of the single player stuff and yet they showed mp only.
Multiplayer was there in the original announcement trailer for the game at E3 2014.
Then my mind must play tricks on me. I thought this was the trailer:
I thought it looked cool till they showed multi player. It didn't understand why they suddenly added mp mode. It felt so forced.
I really want Kotaku or Eurogamer to do a deeper dive and examine the production of this game.
Surely there must be way to resurrect this project? So much has already been done.
I still imagine that despite this beinf cancelled and making Kamiya sad. He's now working on a game he's really wanted to for years now.
RIP Scalebound we hardly knew ye!
Thank you OP for taking the time for writing this up. Will forever be bummed I won't get to play this game. Considering I have an Xbox One S solely for exclusives this game was always one of my reasons for purchase!
Do we know if Microsoft owns the IP for Scalebound? Is this something that can be resurrected by another company fitting the bill for Platinum as publisher and distributer? Or is this dead Jim?
scalebound at the form we saw it last looked way better than nier though. nier has good character models and cool artstyle but once you go into more natural looking environments the graphics are really not that special.Great thread. Thanks for the link to Windows Central too. I'd been DM'd some rumors about Scalebound being killed, but I didn't believe it, figured there was no way Microsoft would kill such a big flagship project. I'd recently interviewed Hideki Kamiya and JP Kellams who both seemed really upbeat about the project, so it just seemed really odd that this kinda rumor would be circulating. Later that same day, I got a call from Microsoft, offering us early access to some news on the state of Scalebound. I was pretty stunned.
We had a brief 15 minute Q&A, they wouldn't offer details on why it had been killed. I asked about the gap it was gonna leave in Microsoft's lineup, and they gave a typical PR response pointing to other games in the lineup (many of which have now been delayed). I think it was pretty soon after Scalebound got killed that the central criticism of today's Xbox started focusing on exclusives, and I don't think that's going to go away any time soon.
A few weeks later and after a few conversations with people I know who were involved with the project (no names, sry), the impression I was given was that Platinum missed a few development milestones. There was definitely a sense, at least a rumor, within Microsoft that PG was essentially putting Microsoft's $$$ towards projects like Nier Automata. Whether that's true or not I don't know, I never got PG's side of the story, so take that with a pinch of salt (and that's why I never published that rumor really). I was also told that the main character was a point of contention, considered to be unappealing to mainstream Western audiences. Again, don't know if 100% true.
I think Scalebound would've been really good if things had gone better. I saw the game running at E3 on a console that year and, sure it was a demo, but it seemed really solid, at least conceptually.
I'm happy over all with my Xbox, but that's mainly because of third-party games. I think for those who are concerned about missing out on exclusives will continue to consider the Xbox a tough sell, even with 6TF.
That is the trailer.
And this is pretty clearly cooperative multiplayer being shown in said CGI trailer:
i disagree. the game had huge hype when it was announced (i remember it being shortly before the launch of bayonetta 2) and with every year passing the list of xbox exclusives got smaller and smaller and this became one of the top 3s for the console for many people in that other forum (including me).I'm sorry but even as a huge Platinum and kamiya fan, they simply didn't sell this game well to either Microsoft or to the general public.
The problem is Platinum misread their audience. While Nintendo fans and Nintendo themselves would obsess over the intricacies of something like TW101, slowly uncovering the gem underneath, Microsoft and Xbox gamers needed a hook, something that would wow them from day one.
People forget that the true way to play Bayonetta (dodge ofset) was never advertised at all and neither for the most part were the intricacies of the combat system. They came secondary to the main hook of the game :- A badass sexy witch who was as stylish as a DMC character.
Mechanics sell games, but character and setting have to draw you in first. If the media had concentrated more on why the Dragon was such a badass or why we should like the DmC reject Drew a bit more, people would have engaged with the project more.
In scalebound I think Platinum coasted a bit too much on kamiyas name and didn't think enough on how to sell themselves to a market that was as unfamiliar with them as studio, even if they had enjoyed what they made previously. They should of also kept an eye on the winds of change around them and realised they needed to get to the point quickly.