Just hours after Kotaku broke the news of the game’s troubles and possible cancellation, Microsoft made it official: Scalebound, the Xbox exclusive from vaunted Japanese studio PlatinumGames and the creator of Devil May Cry, is dead. Eurogamer also reported the cancellation prior to the Xbox-maker’s official notice and offered a few more details from its sources. The relationship between Microsoft and Platinum had deteriorated over the last several months, the report noted, as an increasingly overworked management team were forced to take a month off and the project fell further behind schedule. According to Eurogamer’s sources, the decision to put Scalebound down was made before 2016 was over.
The game was set to star a white-haired punk named Drew—not to be confused with director Hideki Kamiya’s other white-haired punk with a name that starts with D—who is linked to a massive dragon that fights alongside him in battle. It was first announced in 2014 and positioned as a major new exclusive for the publisher that would go on to surface at many of its big press events, including last year’s E3. Hideki Kamiya has no other known projects in the works, but PlatinumGames is currently wrapping up NieR: Automata for Square Enix, which is launching on PlayStation 4 and PC on March 7.
[Note: Kotaku, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]