Developed by PlatinumGames, Scalebound was to be an action RPG featuring dragons and "epic battles on an unbelievable scale" before being axed in 2017, three years after its announcement as an Xbox One exclusive during E3 2014.
Being canceled at a time when the Microsoft console was heavily lacking in the first party games department, some fans were expectedly unhappy with the decision. However, PlatinumGames head producer Atsushi Inaba thinks the blame from fans shouldn"t have fallen squarely on Microsoft.
"Watching fans getting angry at Microsoft over the cancellation wasn’t easy for us to watch." said Inaba in an interview with Video Games Chronicle. "Because the reality is, when any game in development can’t get released it’s because both sides failed."
“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," Inaba added defending Microsoft. "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."
Beyond that, he said that the errors made during Scalebound"s development helped the studio be where it is now, saying "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."
Although there were some rumors circulating about Scalebound being revived as a Nintendo Switch game, it seems the studio has no such plans. PlatinumGames currently has quite a few new projects in the works, including the Switch exclusives Astral Chain and Bayonetta 3, along with Babylon"s Fall for PC and PlayStation 4, among other games. All of them are missing Xbox One releases, however.
Source: Video Games Chronicle