“The Hurdles We Had To Overcome Were Very Big,” PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya Explains On Scalebound’s Shortcoming

Among the iconic IPs developed by Japanese developer PlatinumGames, many fans are still hurt that Scalebound is not one that made it to store shelves. Despite the game originally being slated as an Xbox One exclusive, PlatinumGames & Microsoft ultimately pulled the plug on production. However, hope still remained with claims suggesting Nintendo could potentially intercept the license to continue work on it – which never came to fruition.

Later on details arose suggesting that Microsoft was targeting PlatinumGames for a studio acquisition in favor of Xbox Game Studios. But, that was later denounced by studio leads at the Japanese team. But, PlatinumGames had an idea of its own: interest to acquire the license itself to finish the game said then-PlatinumGames’ head Atsushi Inaba.

In a new interview with studio director Hideki Kamiya on Cutscenes, he elaborates on Scalebound and the reasons that left the game to die when the excitement skyrocketed.

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. 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.

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. So we first decided to go with a universe like that. I loved fantasy worlds since I was a child. I’ve always enjoyed worlds with swords, magic, and dragons.

When I was a child, I don’t know if people overseas are familiar with these, but I would play Sorcerian, Hydlide, all these fantasy games from the classic PC era that I really enjoyed. I always wanted to make something around that theme. This is how I thought of a world revolving around a young man fighting together with a dragon.

“However, it was a big challenge for PlatinumGames. We were working in an environment we weren’t used to. We were developing on the Unreal engine, we also lacked the necessary know-how to build a game based on online features. The hurdles we had to overcome were very big.

He continues, “We weren’t experienced enough and couldn’t get over that wall, leading to what happened in the end. 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.”

Kamiya earlier in the video interview also disclosed the original inspiration for The Wonderful 101. Despite the state of the game we are familiar with now, he strived to use the team building feature with iconic video game characters similar to how Super Smash Bros. is structured. But, the game never took off and he used the mechanic with an original cast of superheroes instead.

Previously, former Tange Gameworks Ikumi Nakamura when speaking with Cutscenes revealed her efforts after departing from The Evil Within/GhostWire: Tokyo team is opening her own independent game studio. You can read the full report by heading here.

What is your response to Kamiya’s answer to Scalebound being canceled?