Microsoft debuts its first dragon-fighting scene from Scalebound

Here, finally, be dragons.

Hideki Kamiya, game director at Platinum Games, took the stage at Microsoft’s Gamescom press conference to show off the first gameplay from Scalebound, an action role-playing game that he said was the biggest game Platinum has ever made. It’s a game that didn’t appear at the giant Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show last month, showing that Microsoft wanted to save some material for Europe’s biggest gaming show.

In Scalebound, you play a sword-and-bow wielding hero who travels with a huge dragon. It has a four-player cooperative mode, and it comes out during the holiday season in 2016. Kamiya said that you can play on foot or on the back of a dragon. He showed how you can fight soldiers and direct the dragon to wipe out buildings full of enemies.

One of the cool things about the combat is that the hero can transform himself partially into the dragon and fight with a huge claw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5ldMjl-n3c

 

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.