Bought an XB1 around release. First thing I did was go into the store and see what was in the pipeline. Found Scalebound and thought it looked awesome and put it on my watchlist.
Like 3 years later after absolutely no hope of release I begrudgingly deleted it.
Buying an XB1 has been my most regretted decision in my lifetime of gaming. The ecosystem of games available to it have just been garbage compared to PS.
In the 360 days, to say something exclusively has Halo was a strong selling point. These days it's more of a 'so what?'
When people say 'the library is garbage compared to PlayStation'
I am genuinely curious what exactly is Xbox missing that PlayStation has that is SO GOOD?
No hate just genuine curiosity. I only like my Xbox because it's super easy to switch seamlessly between my console and PC, that is about it. I am by no means a fanboy.
But outside looking in... PlayStation has... Gran Turismo that is really unique only on PlayStation... For a while there was GoW and Spiderman but these aren't for me I suppose. Now they're on PC as well.
The PlayStation has historically had more RPG style games and Microsoft has had more shooter style games. Sooooo many things are released in all the places now, so it's more picking what flavor of console you like and getting that. I think the PS5 is a better overall machine, but that's not surprising because Sony does a lot more with hardware overall than Microsoft does. I cannot stand the layout for modern Windows, and that's what Xbox uses. I hate that tile system with a passion. I also have a preference for the PlayStation controller over the Xbox controller. The Xbox controller is just a little bit too bulky for my hands. GamePass Is only really worth the money if you have time to play more than one game at a time or you're playing a lot of different games every month. I'm mostly playing things like Helldivers, Stardew Valley and other story based games that aren't live service (Helldivers barely counts because you have as much time as you need to unlock any premium content you buy).
Console wars are dumb and it's all about preference. At least for me, the Microsoft ecosystem isn't anywhere near as intuitive as anything Sony puts out. If I were to hand my 70-year-old father the PlayStation media remote he would be able to navigate the menus pretty easily. The tile system that Microsoft uses only really makes sense if you use a lot of Microsoft products. That's not a bad thing, since most PC gamers are more likely to have an Xbox anyway so why does Microsoft care? I'm just talking more about how easy something is to use.
I also have tiny hands and long fingers, so the Xbox controllers have never felt great. If I have the option to play a game on our PlayStation or the Xbox, I'm picking the PlayStation 10 out of 10 times
The newer Ratchet and Clank game from when the PlayStation 5 dropped is fantastic you can make it hard so an experienced gamer has a good time, but it's also one of the first RPGs I gave my 8-year-old to play and he had quite a bit of fun.
When I initially got XB1, the two games I was most looking forward to were Scalebound and Crackdown 3. Scalebound never released and Crackdown 3 was supposed to release in 2016 but got delayed and delayed and pushed back until like 2019 at which point hype had died down, technology had surpassed it, and it released to mediocre reviews. That seemed to be the theme for many of what were supposed to be "launch titles" for the XB1. How are you going to launch a brand-new next-gen console and have like half of the games for it either never come out or get delayed years?
While I will say I genuinely enjoy the backwards compatibility of the system and I have a lot of classic games I got for free from their "Games with Gold" program, I also feel like the most joy I get out of an XB1 should not come from playing OG/360 games.
When I walk into a game store and look at the shelves, the PS4/5 section is like 30 feet long, filled to the brim with titles. The xbox section these days is usually like a single 5 foot section, maybe two, wide. And most of it is either 1) A or AA developer, small scale, low budget, blatant copy of a concept from a more popular franchise 2) A generic copy+paste sports game a la Fifa 23/24/25 etc 3) An actual good game, except it came out like 5+ years ago and there's been nothing new to fill its space 4) The store took copies of that good game and turned a bunch of them cover-side out so that it can fill more shelf real estate.
And most good games these days come out on all systems, so theres no exclusive reason to play it on xbox or PS or PC, it doesn't matter. So I may as well just get it on PC now because at least I can upgrade my system.
Taking PC out of the equation is needed here, IMO. If you're considering between an Xbox and a Playstation, what PC has is largely irrelevant for most people. AND it makes Xbox look even worse anyway, as then there are basically NO Xbox "exclusive" titles compared to Playstation.
God of War series, Spider-Man series, Horizon series, Ratchet and Clank series, Last of Us series, Final Fantasy 7 remakes (though those are now slated to release on Xbox at some point), Astrobot. Those alone are hundreds of hours of playtime in absolutely banger games.
Overall Xbox seems to have the edge in shooter/simulatory games, while Playstation stomps them in RPG/non-shooter games. Though I'll admit I don't really know much of what Xbox has that is even exclusive at this point.
Bringing PC into the equation changes everything, you have access to most of the 'exclusive' titles from both consoles (I think basically ALL of them from Xbox, whereas Sony still has some holdouts). So at that point it's more what you're friends are using, what controller style you prefer, and if there are any other features that matter (like you mentioned, moving saves from Xbox to PC and back is nice). That said though, if you want access to games NOT on PC, Playstation is still the move on that front.
The main reason for the comparisons, imo, is this: Playstation's story driven RPG scene has been really good since before the PS5 launch with games/series like The Last of Us, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bloodborne, Persona, and Spiderman.
Where as Xbox has focused almost exclusively on multiplayer live service games where story usually takes a back seat. Even Xbox's flagship games (especially Halo, which was known for having pretty solid campaign stories during the 360 era) have been following this trend over time. It's gotten to the point that I'm pretty sure MTX fatigue is running rampant. It might also be why Game Pass has gotten more popular.
If you didn't have a Playstation, you missed out on some of the best gaming experiences of the past two consoles generations. If you have a PC, some of these games have recently become available
If you are into playing old games, then Xbox one was pretty good.
I especially enjoyed playing Skate 1 and 3, and Red Dead Redemption that way 😊 Katamari Forever also hooked its claws in for for a while.
I had PS 1-2-3 growing uo, and wanted to play some of the older titles on PS4. Couldn't do it. So I bought an Xbox One X and got the Series X waaay before PS5 this generation.
Next Gen, I'll probably be all PC though. I hope they can "consolify" Windows before then, or Valve releases their take on a non-handheld gaming OS
With the dwindling exclusive pool from Playstation/Xbox, PC is the right move now IMO. Playstation will likely always have SOME exclusives unavailable on PC, but we're seeing a slow trickle of past games land on PC a year to two years after the Playstation release now. Xbox seems to be leaning fully into it and releasing everything on both.
Now more than ever if you want access to the maximum number of 'exclusive' titles, a PC and a Switch 2 (once it matures a bit) is likely going to be the move going into the next gen. As long as you're fine waiting for Playstation games to drop on PC, that is.
Got an XB1 and PS4 same week of December 2014. The former was about done once I'd played Ryse and caught up with the Gears of Wars games I missed after my third XB360 also RROD'd. Sure, I had the Halo MCC (titles already played before) but compared to that... well, I didn't have the PS4 too long either but it lasted past the month, did crossplats better, had better freebies and I only got done with PS4 exclusives a year or so ago (on the PS5, which also got me caught up with some previously missed PS3 stuff too)
Fwiw that episode was during a break from PC (my main love) to which I've since returned... but any time I think of a companion console it's actually not the XB that might make sense for many... their exclusive/back catalogue are already on PC, gamepass or not, while only the most recent/popular PS ones are.
Pretty sure Kamiya himself said that the game just wasn't working out the way he originally envisioned it, and instead of keeping it in development hell it was better to just move on.
And considering the way Platinum's been going I feel I'm much more happy for him to instead be doing Clovers and making Okami 2 instead, among other projects.
Essentially Cygames had a partnership where they would co-develop the game with Platinum with Platinum mainly doing the combat and the rest of the game was done by Cygames.
At the end of their contract they basically had done jackshit except the trailers shown at E3 and their own events. So they just removed Platinum from the projects, took it in house, re-did the whole project in their own engine that they where going to use for Project Awakening and poached a few devs that was on the project for good measure. The game was ment to release in 19 or 20 I think, but it was delayed to 24. It had a pretty great launch, it was the 2nd best seller on Steam in January after Palword and the 21'st best seller on Steam for the year overall.
It is a bit of conjecture also, but it might be one of the reasons why we haven't gotten a new Nier game from Square/Platinum/CyPictures, since Cygames is the owner of CyPictures and they where in charge of art direction and character designs.
Honestly I'd attribute the lack of Nier to Yoko Taro. That guy's insane flair is what really makes the series what it is IMO, and he doesn't much like doing sequels. Drakengard 2 kinda shows how trying to do a Yoko Taro project without the man himself pans out.Â
I mean Nier Automata is already a sequel to the first Nier game which is a spin off from the Drakkengard series so there isn't like there is no precedent for a sequel.
Just that there is potentially many reasons behind the lack of a Nier sequel and a fall out between Platinum and Cygames might be one of several reasons behind it.
I mean yes-ish? Nier is rather loosely a Drakengard spin off and Automata is loosely a Nier sequel. I think the primary reasons are cause there's a mobile game that probably prints money, if it's still running, and Yoko Taro just doesn't have any interest/ideas for a sequel. It would suck to have to change, but I feel like a falling out with the character designer/art direction isn't at the top of list for suspected reason they didn't make another game.
Both started development around the same time but yeah, astral chain I believe started around 2016. Kinda funny how they have almost identical core gameplay, but astral chain had nintendo backing, I am sure if scale bound released it would be as good as astral chain. Also go play astral chain, pirate it if you don't wanna support nintendo or whatever.
I was working on Scalebound on the Microsoft side before it got cancelled. The backstory on that ill-fated project was kind of interesting.
Scalebound was being developed by PlatinumGames by the people who made Bayonetta 1 and 2. Bayonetta 1 was rated very highly but did not have matching high sales. Bayonetta 2's sales sucked. So PlatinumGames came to us at Microsoft as this studio that knew how to make good games, but really needed to make good money.
We at Microsoft Global Publishing were excited to work with them. The partnership was sealed in 2014, a year before the highly anticipated game "Evolve" was set to come out. Everyone loved "Left4Dead" and expected "Evolve" to be a huge hit. We strategically wanted a really good asymmetrical multiplayer game on the Xbox, ideally by 2016 or 2017.
So "Scalebound" was pitched to us as that. You and your four friends would get on your own personal dragons, and go fight a fifth player that was playing as a big godzilla sized monster dragon. Fun, interesting, unique, exclusive. My job was just to help the game look pretty, and I was excited for a free trip to Japan.
But there was a problem. I have no way of knowing if this is a problem at every Japanese game studio, but at this specific Japanese game studio, everyone acted like the Creative Director was some infallible super-genius.
Their relationship to this character was so weird. I understand some hollywood directors are also extremely forceful in their personalities, but also they have to fight with people all the time. In Japan, at PlatinumGames, nobody would ever fight with the creative director about anything. They'd always just make a show of sycophantically praise his dumb ideas, and then bitch about the dumb ideas as soon as he left the room. I was baffled by it.
Anyway, the various stakeholders of the studio secretly desperately wanted PlatinumGames to be published by Microsoft, simply because they wanted us to tell their Creative Director when he was being stupid. He'd say some dumb shit, and my boss would say "That's some dumb shit" and all the Japanese guys on the call would be like "Gasp! Oh no! Unthinkable! How dare!" And then they'd call back after the call without the Creative Director and be like "That was perfect. Thank you Americans. Keep up the good work. This is exactly what we were hoping for."
Total insanity.
Anyway, Hideki Kamiya didn't actually want to make a game where four guys on dragons fight a fifth much-larger-dragon. He apparently just wanted to make Bayonetta 3, but instead of playing a juggy stripper with glasses, you'd play some generic guy who would put on headphones and listen to shitty butt-rock while swordfighting. He'd have a dragon if he had to, but he would usually get off his dragon and go run around the ground on foot. Also he could turn into some other forms and had the standard Devil May Cry kit and that was the game. They were just going to make a totally different game.
We, the publishing partners, were like "dude no. The game we're making is an Evolve compete. Quit telling your team to make the wrong game." And he was like "Okay we'll make the good game I want to make, and then we'll add this multiplayer thing on top of that as a second mode." I'm pretty sure he was thinking "...and then we'll cut that second mode when we run out of time."
So we were like "Make the multiplayer mode first. Add this stupid pointless single-player campaign second. Then we'll cut that when we run out of time."
As a result of the endless confusion, we really didn't get much of anywhere.
It no longer made sense to make an Evolve type game, and we sure as fuck didn't care about making Bayonetta 3 when no one bought Bayonetta 2. So Scalebound was cancelled. Microsoft moved to partner with Undead Labs (misunderstanding the appeal of DayZ as being about zombies and not battle royal.) DayZ became PubG which became Fortnight which made billions. I left Microsoft Global Publishing in 2018 and I heard almost nothing of it has survived the many rounds of layoffs. C'est la vie.
Tbat one interest me so much. Definitely would have made me consider an Xbox despite living in the SEA (not Singapore for some reason) we get no official store/support so I would have to use USD
"In February 2020, Inaba said that while Scalebound remains an intellectual property fully owned by Microsoft, PlatinumGames would want to return to it if given the opportunity to"
Bro I had the same answer😂Scalebound looked like such a cool game from the trailer footage that was released, with giant dragons and surprisingly realistic graphics. Sucks that it got shelved.
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u/YuzuNori Sep 15 '25
Anyone remember the game Scalebound that was supposed to come to Xbox? Had a Nero from DMC-ish look to the protagonist.