After what has been a tough couple of years for developer PlatinumGames, with staff taking long breaks from a hellacious work schedule and engine difficulties continuing well beyond its original launch window, Scalebound has now been officially cancelled by Microsoft.
Scalebound was a dragon riding, pseudo-contemporary fantasy about a man and his dragon. Together they would fly around an open world, completing missions, shooting and slashing bad guys and hitting anything they wanted with fireballs. Players would be able to give commands to the AI controlled dragon, directly fly it at some points and exchange witty banter with cooperative players in up to four person battles.
It seemed like an exciting game and when originally shown off at E3 2013 prior to the Xbox One's November release, it was used to show off just how good graphics on the new console could be.
Today it doesn't look quite as impressive, but performance issues and somewhat generic gameplay seem to have pulled down the expansive title.
PCGamesN highlights a couple of tweets from production staff over the past couple of years, which suggest the relationship between Platinum and Microsoft soured over the game's development. It's unlikely to improve now that Microsoft has canned the game though.
We don't know yet if Platinum will look for a new publisher of the game, or will look to get the game finished itself, but scrapping three+ years of work is never an easy decision to make.