Scalebound director explains why the action RPG never saw the light of day

Scalebound director Hideki Kamiya has explained why the Xbox RPG never saw the light of day and apologizes to Microsoft and fans for failing to deliver it.

In an interview with Cutscenes, Kamiya discusses his career at PlatinumGames as well as his previous work on the WiiU game The Wonderful 101 and Scalebound, which was originally meant to be an action RPG for Xbox One before it was canceled in 2017.

In the interview, Kamiya explains: "Scalebound was a project we had teamed up on with Microsoft, they expected good things from us, and we needed to live up to those expectations with the project." He then goes on to say though, "it was a big challenge for PlatinumGames. We were working in an environment we weren't used to. [...] The hurdles we had to overcome were very big. We weren't experienced enough and couldn't get over that wall, leading to what happened in the end."

Going into more detail about the ordeal, Kamiya said: "We were developing on the Unreal engine, we also lacked the necessary know-how to build a game based on online features," before apologizing to both Xbox and expectant fans adding, "I'm sorry to the players who looked forward to it, and moreover I'm sorry to Microsoft who had placed their trust in us as a business partner. I want to apologize both as a creator and as a member of PlatinumGames."

Earlier on in the interview, Kaiyama talks about the excitement he had working with Microsoft on Scalebound, he reveals, "teaming up with Microsoft meant releasing the game on the latest Xbox console. I once again had the desire to make a high-end game. I wanted to go back to something photorealistic." He continues, "while it was a personal wish of mine, I thought it was also a necessary mission for PlatinumGames to improve our graphical ability and get to the next step of modern game creation."

To find out what Xbox games you can still look forward to, take a look at our upcoming Xbox Series X games list.

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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.