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Hideki Kamiya on Why Scalebound Was Cancelled: 'We Weren't Experienced Enough'

Hideki Kamiya on Why Scalebound Was Cancelled: 'We Weren't Experienced Enough' - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 19 November 2021 / 2,151 Views

Scalebound was announced for the Xbox One at E3 2014 as an Xbox exclusive and was later supposed to also get a PC release. However, it would eventually be cancelled.

PlainumGames director Hideki Kamiya in a new interview with YouTube channel Cutscenes (and transcribed by Gematsu) discussed Scalebound and explained why the game was eventually cancelled. 

Kamiya said the team wasn't experienced enough and they were unable to get over that wall. He apologized to everyone who was looking forward to the game.

"Scalebound was a project we had teamed up on with Microsoft," said Kamiya. "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.

"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."


A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.


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11 Comments
VAMatt (on 19 November 2021)

Well, at least he owned it.

  • +19
LudicrousSpeed (on 20 November 2021)

Never understood why MS got blame for this. The developer has admitted multiple times they blew it, and all you have to do is watch footage to see that they blew it. Game looked like absolute garbage.

Just remember that MS released Crackdown 3 multiplayer but thought Scalebound was too big a lost cause. That should say something.

  • +6
IcaroRibeiro (on 21 November 2021)

I wish more directors and creators were that honest

  • +4
Azzanation (on 20 November 2021)

Well it puts to rest the "Its MS fault" Not surprised as this was surfaced awhile back when PlatinumGames came out and said it wasn't, but it wont stop some people.

  • +1
mjk45 (on 20 November 2021)

Kamiya get over it its old news that you have talked about many times before.

  • 0
Mystro-Sama (on 19 November 2021)

I hope they at least do something with the lore. It seemed promising.

  • 0
DonFerrari (on 19 November 2021)

Uhnnn so first it wasn't MS fault and finally a respected dev saying it is quite the difficult thing to develop with photorealism so armchair people can stop the "it is easy to do photorealism you just copy the world, no creativity or art involved" just throw money at it.

  • 0
mjk45 DonFerrari (on 20 November 2021)

Yes it's really hard to do photorealistic dragons by copying them in real life , but mostly it's the burn damage.

  • +8
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DonFerrari Hiku (on 19 November 2021)

Or cater to their strenghts and design the game around that as it isn't really mandatory to be photorealistic to be good =] and diversity of designs is also good.

  • +6
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