Bayonetta Director Explains How Canceled Scalebound Can Help Future Platinum Games

PlatinumGames' Scalebound was set to be one of the Xbox One's most intriguing exclusives. However, Scalebound was unexpectedly canceled which came as a great shock to fans. Now, in a profile from IGN, Platinum director Hideki Kamiya talks a little about Scalebound's cancellation and how the project is still talked about in the company's Japan offices.

"For the fans, an apology is really all that I can offer. I'm terribly sorry," Kamiya told IGN in a recent interview. "That goes for the fans, but it goes for the team members wor worked on the game as well. The staff here at Platinum, the creative team at Microsoft, there were a lot of people who worked on this game and tried to make it special." Kamiya also says that he feels "a lot of weight" for not delivering the game.

However, Kamiya does acknowledge that, as with all things in life, there are lessons from Scalebound's development that will help Platinum as the company moves onto other projects. "Along the way we learned a lot and gained new experience, so the time we spent was not wasted."

Recently, Kamiya held an informal meeting at the Platinum offices, discussing ideas for a new project. He said that the meeting was not mandatory, but there were many members on the former Scalebound dev team who showed up anyways, eager to get started on another project.

Kamiya didn't share what exactly these new game ideas were, but explained that he was surprised at the activity at the meeting. "There were lots of questions like, 'Okay, well then, what about this?' or 'I have an idea that might work in this game.' I was getting lots of feedback. If you're in a small room, where you have a group of five or 10 people, it's easy for people to exchange opinions. But if you get 50 people or more in a room together and you then say, 'Okay, question time, does anybody have anything to say?' usually you hear crickets, because no one wants to speak up. But not this time."

There are no official announcements of a new game from PlatinumGames, but the studio apparently has a "full slate" of projects currently in the works. PlatinumGames recently developed Nier: Automata with Square Enix. Automata was a critical and financial success, shipping more than a million copies back in April.