Xbox Report Says Cancelled Exclusive Could Get a Second Chance

By Marc Deschamps

This month officially marked a disappointing anniversary for Xbox fans, as January 9th, 2017 saw the cancellation of Scalebound. The collaboration between Microsoft and PlatinumGames had seen a lot of anticipation from Xbox One owners, but the game failed to materialize. According to a new rumor from Xbox insider Shpeshal_Nick, the two companies are back in talks to revive the IP (presumably on Xbox Series X|S), but things are apparently still in the early stages. As with any rumor, readers are advised to take this one with a grain of salt until we hear something concrete from Xbox!

Scalebound was first announced at E3 2014. An action-RPG, the game would have been set in a world known as Draconis. Players would have mostly controlled a character named Drew, and occasionally his dragon, Thuban. Drew would have been able to control Thuban in a first-person "Dragon Link" mode, but doing so would have left him open to attacks from enemies, and if one character died, so would the other. In addition to a single-player mode, the game would have also offered four-player co-op.

This all seemed very ambitious, and it sounds like it would have given Xbox something vastly different from the rest of the company's first-party offerings. Unfortunately, things fell apart for one reason or another, and neither side has offered specific information about what went wrong. Despite this, Microsoft does own the IP, and PlatinumGames studio head Atsushi Inaba expressed an interest in revisiting Scalebound in a 2020 interview with Eurogamer.

Following the release of Bayonetta 3 last year, it's been suggested that PlatinumGames reused some of its Scalebound ideas in the Nintendo Switch exclusive. It doesn't seem that's ever been confirmed, but it's clear that Platinum hasn't forgotten the game, and was interested in coming back to it, at least at some point. For now, Xbox fans will just have to wait patiently to see if the IP does come back in some form.

Were you disappointed by Scalebound's cancellation? Do you think the game will get a second chance? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter and on Hive at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!

[H/T: DualShockers]

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