Hideki Kamiya Wants To Revive Canceled Xbox Exclusive Scalebound

Scalebound debuted as an Xbox One exclusive at E3 2014. PlatinumGames built it under Hideki Kamiya’s direction, and Microsoft killed it in January 2017. Nine years later, Kamiya still wants to revive it, and this time he’s addressing his comments straight at whoever’s now running Xbox.

Kamiya’s Message To Xbox’s New CEO

VGC asked directly: with Xbox under new leadership, had he reached out to Asha Sharma about bringing Scalebound back? Kamiya replied:

Well, no, but now’s my opportunity to once again say that if they want to do it, let’s make it happen!Koyama is on board too.”

Kento Koyama is the president of Clovers, the studio Kamiya founded after leaving PlatinumGames, currently deep in development on Okami 2.

The Team Behind It Hasn’t Moved On

That dinner with former Scalebound staff came up too. Most of the group hadn’t been apart that long, Kamiya said, and two of them work at Clovers now. The evening wasn’t really about Scalebound, just drinks and catching up, mostly, but the game came up more than once. Everyone at the table, he said, still looked back on making it fondly.

He didn’t stop at nostalgia, though. Kamiya was direct about how much the project still means to him:

Of course, it’s very unfortunate that the project was unable to see the light of day ultimately, and that is something that even now I still very strongly desire to be able to see through if it’s all possible, and I’m being one hundred percent serious when I say that.”

He pointed to his own studio’s history as reason for hope, too, drawing a direct line to Okami’s own unlikely second chance: “I strongly believe that if you want something strongly enough, you eventually find a way to make it happen. That’s the case with Okami right now, where even after all these years, the opportunity once again presented itself, and I hope that will be the case with Scalebound in the future as well.”

Whether any of this leads to an actual revival remains an open question. Kamiya’s own studio is currently focused on finishing Okami 2 but, nearly a decade after its cancellation, he hasn’t stopped hoping the door is still open.