NeoGaf insiders claimed that Hideki Kamiya from Platinum Games had to take time off due to the stress of working on Scalebound, receiving treatment for mental health issues leading up to the cancellation of the game by Microsoft. This was recently reported on by This Gen Gaming. Hideki Kamiya has denied receiving mental health treatment over the Scalebound cancellation.
In a series of Tweets, Hideki Kamiya expressed great gratitude toward the outpouring of support from fans over the disheartening news that Scalebound, the Xbox One and PC exclusive, had been cancelled.
Lupianwolf compiled all the tweets in one easy to read post, where Kamiya stated…
“As you may have already heard, Scalebound has unfortunately been canceled. I’m very sorry to everyone who was looking forward to this game. Sorry to bring you such bad news at the start of the year. All I can do for you is to promise to keep delivering fun games. I’ll work extra hard to never have to let you down like this again, so I hope you will keep watching over us in the future too.
“And…I took time off for my mental health? …Me!? No way.”
Some gamers have been giving Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, some real grief over the decision to pull the plug on the dragon-riding, hack-and-slash, third-person adventure game. Spencer insists that the Xbox brand is still healthy and they have a goal in mind with the Xbox One and Xbox Scorpio… it just doesn’t include Scalebound.
Some gamers also worried about Crackdown 3, which many feel is vaporware at this point. The game was supposed to have a limited public alpha on the Xbox One last summer in 2016 but it never came to fruition and Microsoft generally ignored its existence at E3 and GamesCom, to the two biggest gaming events of the year.
With the pool of Xbox exclusives looking about as thick as Jason Statham’s hair, Xbox One owners are now leery about investing into an Xbox Scorpio if the games aren’t there. As the old saying goes: software moves hardware. And right now Xbox gamers aren’t seeing a lot of promising software titles on the horizon.
As for Platinum Games… the outpouring of support has seen a lot of fans brushing off the cancellation news by telling Kamiya how awesome he is and how much they’re looking forward to his next project. Kamiya almost welled up his eyes with man-tears, stating on Twitter…
“I thought I would get lots of savage messages, but in reality I’m getting lots of warm messages. Thank you. (´；_；`)”
Don’t feel too bad for Platinum, they still have a strong looking 2017 ahead of them if the hype and community interest surrounding NieR: Automata is anything to go by. The game’s already receiving a lot of positive feedback based on the demo, and the protagonist 2B has garnered a strong following of dedicated fans thanks to her irresistible callipygian.
Scalebound is due out never but you can look for NieR: Automata to launch on PS4 in March 7th in North America and on Steam for PC at some point later in 2017.
