IO’s third unannounced project has already been mentioned, with CEO Hakan Abrak telling IGN, “I should mention that we are also working on something else. Something completely new… a new IP. The company then opened a new studio in Barcelona, in part to work on the unannounced game.
Reports suggest the new game will be developed by an entirely separate team, as other IO teams continue to update Hitman 3 and work on Project 007, the new James Bond game. This is a radical change from just a few years ago, when IO parted ways with Square Enix to become fully independent.
The weird and additional detail here is that Microsoft has already worked with an outside developer on a fantastic dragon-focused IP – one that has never been released. Scalebound was announced as a collaboration with PlatinumGames in 2014, but ran into issues and was canceled in 2017.
Platinum producer Atsushi Inaba previously said the studio would like to revisit the project, but confirmed that Microsoft owns the rights. Of course, fantasy games with dragons aren’t entirely uncommon, and the publisher apparently ditched the Scalebound brand several years ago, so this may be more of a weird coincidence than anything else.
Joe Skrebels is the editor of IGN News. Follow him on Twitter. Any advice to give us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected]
