Much to my disappointment, this news broke some days ago. Was wondering what the heck the reason was to cancel a triple-A game after over 4 years of development. It was one of the few XBO exclusives I had an acute interest in. Well I saw this today: https://www.vg247.com/2017/01/10/scalebounds-troubles-were-visible-in-its-two-sided-previews/ ...this would seem to explain a lot of things. Whenever I saw video of the title, I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed at how simplistic they made it seem. Apparently there was a lot of RPG depth/complexity under the hood, but Microsoft didn't want to show that off, for whatever reason. Very maddening. The writer of the above article says it "gave me some Dragon's Dogma vibes," and man, I would've loved anything even approximating Dragon's Dogma on a current-gen system. Talk about your missed opportunities.
I wonder if Sony will pick up the pieces. I don't think there are any instances in which a spurned game developer, in which the game would have been a console exclusive, ever jumped to an opposing game system, but if there's enough interest in PS's side, there'd be no reason not to jump. Scalebound to Sony, from Microsoft would be like Arrested Development to Netflix, from Fox, in a sense.
Because the P&L no longer works - and you don't think you will make as much money to finish it, so you would rather allocate your assets elsewhere. DD
I assume Microsoft was funding it in order for it to be an exclusive, and thus would never allow Sony to pick it up. Though, part of me wonders if Sony couldn't just grab up some of the devs to make a "substantially similar" title (wink wink, nudge nudge). I mean Demon's Souls was a Sony exclusive, and then From Software just took the same gameplay, slapped a slightly different name on it, and released it on both consoles. Probably not, but one can hope. I can't get enough of games of Monster Hunter / Dragon's Dogma ilk.
Yep, it may take more money to finish it than you project you will make. We had a game called Shadows of Mordor that was 6 months from completion, it was a 5 million dollar budget and Universal was 4 million in....and to cancel the game they had to pay us 500k - so they cancelled the game paid 500k, and walked, even though for another 500k they would have the completed game and easily make at least 500k back. But hey, sometimes people are stupid. DD
