Hideki Kamiya, creator of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, has sparked debate again by stating that it is preferable to cancel a project than to release it in a poor state. The veteran designer recalls his experience with Scalebound, a title canceled by Microsoft, and points out that even Resident Evil 2 was scrapped and remade. His statements highlight the tension between delivery deadlines and final quality in the industry.
Development as a process of discarding and refining 🎮
Kamiya believes that releasing a mediocre game damages a studio's reputation more than not publishing it. In development, cancellations allow for reevaluating mechanics, performance, and design without date pressures. The case of Scalebound, an ambitious action title, was canceled in 2017 by Microsoft after technical and vision issues. Kamiya compares this decision to that of Resident Evil 2, which went through a scrapped version before becoming the classic we know.
Yoko Taro and the art of making games you'll never see 🤖
While Kamiya defends cancellations with quality arguments, Yoko Taro reveals that most of his projects from the last three years were canceled. Given his track record of strange and existentialist titles, perhaps those discarded games were so weird that the world wasn't ready for them yet. Or maybe they just became too depressing, even by Nier's standards.