Hideki Kamiya Wants To Revive Canceled Scalebound

The last few years of Hideki Kamiya's career have been rather tumultuous to say the least. After 17 years at PlatinumGames, which he co-founded back in 2006, Kamiya left the studio in 2023 under a disagreement with co-founder Itsushi Inaba. Shortly afterward, Kamiya joined Clovers, a recently formed studio primarily made up of former PlatinumGames members.

At The Game Awards 2024, a reveal was announced that Clovers is working together with Capcom on a sequel for Ōkami under the direction of Kamiya. The reveal came in at being one of the hottest of the night, falling only behind a huge Capcom reboot in Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

Scalebound came out once more as gaming legend Hideki Kamiya playfully prods Xbox's Phil Spencer into reviving the canceled fantasy RPG. An unpublished relic of the early days of Xbox One, Scalebound was announced in 2014 by PlatinumGames as an Xbox console exclusive under the direction of action game legend Hideki Kamiya, previously known for franchises like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, and Ōkami.

Unfortunately, Scalebound production was halted in 2017 allegedly due to development problems. Since then, however, some Xbox gamers have been quietly hoping that Scalebound will be revived with Kamiya as director.

Less than half a year after revealing Ōkami 2 at The Game Awards, Clovers has shared a short video clip on Twitter that shows Hideki Kamiya at his desk with Clovers developers sitting nearby watching some of the earlier Scalebound trailers. From the post, Kamiya remembered the canceled dragon RPG and added a quote from the director to the tune: "I'd love to make it again someday." Kamiya himself had a tweet quoting the original, with "Let's do it, Phil," of course referring to Head of Xbox Phil Spencer.

While it seems clear that Kamiya is willing to attempt Scalebound once more, the real question is whether Xbox still is. In contrast to during the initial Xbox One generation, Xbox has now built up an enormous stable of first-party developers and, accordingly, has a mind-boggling number of big new games scheduled to release this year and beyond; it no longer needs new first-party titles. In addition to that, Xbox has already lined up several large fantasy RPGs in the works.

On the other hand, it just launched Obsidian's Avowed last month, Playground Games' Fable reboot is on next year, and The Elder Scrolls VI will be Todd Howard and Bethesda Game Studios' next large RPG. On top of that, Xbox is also collaborating with Hitman developer IO Interactive on a fantasy game named Project Dragon. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of room for yet another huge fantasy game in the list of games on Xbox's catalog right now.

While all of this Scalebound is purely rumor, for the moment at least, Hideki Kamiya fans do have something to be excited about: the sequel to Ōkami. Since it has no release date, the Ōkami sequel is likely years away. Regarding the possible Scalebound revival, if Xbox ever comes around to give the dragon-riding action RPG another chance, it would probably be several years after the Ōkami sequel comes out since Clovers is a new studio and is still quite small.