Scalebound IMG

Earlier this week, we reported a rumour about Nintendo's plans to revive a "dead and buried" game. This rumour stems from a comment made by Game Informer's Senior Editor Imran Khan on last week's Kinda Funny Games show. According to the source, Nintendo has intentions of reviving a certain project, even though it was "officially" canned.

Of course, this sent the rumor mill wild, with various outlets and fans speculating it could be the axed Wii title Project H.A.M.M.E.R. or perhaps even PlatinumGames' Scalebound, which was intended to be an Xbox One exclusive.

At the time, industry insider, video game historian and Nintendo Life contributor Liam Robertson chimed in on Twitter to have his say and after a handful of requests, he's now published a video discussing the possibility of Nintendo reviving the above-mentioned titles. Take a look below:

To be blunt about it, Mr. Robertson is certain Project H.A.M.M.E.R will never return, citing it as a "catastrophe" for everyone involved in the development process - with Nintendo spending millions of dollars trying to get it to work over the period of five years. There was such a severe level of mismanagement, about half of Nintendo Software Technology ended up leaving and Nintendo lost a lot of faith in the studio in the process. Mr. Robertson believes it to be one of the most "expensive and damaging" cancelled projects in the company's history and as a result, doesn't expect it to be revived.

As for Scalebound, Mr. Robertson has enough sources at PlatinumGames to get an idea of what's going on, which makes it hard for him to believe the game would ever make a return - even though he does think there still is a very small possibility it could. His main reasoning as to why nothing would be happening with this game right now, though, was tied to how it was very "personal" to a number of former employees. If it was restarted now, without the original team, it wouldn't be the same creative vision.

The cancellation also plays a part, with Microsoft and Platinum coming to the agreement the project was unsalvagable. Mr. Robertson doesn't believe Platinum would go back on such a big decision within the space of a few years. Performance issues are another factor in play, as the game had a huge sense of scale and it wasn't even able to run properly on the original Xbox One. In order for the game to run on the Switch, it would need to be significantly scaled back, and by this stage, it might not even be the same vision. To top it off, PlatinumGames' finances and resources are already stretched and Microsoft still owns Scalebound.

One surprise from Mr. Robertson was a comment about how he had heard Nintendo and Microsoft "are working on some big things together." Still, he doesn't think it involves Microsoft selling Scalebound to Nintendo. Adding to this, Nintendo seemingly has a lot of respect for Platinum and the original creators of Scalebound, so it wouldn't be looking to acquire the IP.

Do you think these games will ever make a return? Leave a comment below.

[source youtu.be]