‘Prey 2’ For PS3 And Xbox 360 Officially Cancelled By Bethesda

Bethesda Softworks Vice President Pete Hines confirmed Thursday what many had already expected. Prey 2 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC has finally been officially cancelled.

A trailer for Prey 2 debuted in 2011 and impressed for its depiction of former U.S. Marshall Killian Samuels turned bounty hunter on the alien world of Exodus. The game was to not only be a sequel to the original Prey, but ambitious enough to turn the linear shooter into an open-world shooter.

The game was promoted by Bethesda and even marketed with the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. However, developer Human Head Studios and Bethesda clashed over the game, and rumors started in 2012 that the game was cancelled. Two years later, it is now official.

“It was game we believed in, but we never felt that it got to where it needed to be – we never saw a path to success if we finished it,” Hines said in a report from CNET.

“It wasn’t up to our quality standard and we decided to cancel it. It’s no longer in development. That wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s one that won’t surprise many folks given that we hadn’t been talking about it.

“Human Head Studios is no longer working on. It’s a franchise we still believe we can do something with — we just need to see what that something is.”

The conflict between Human Head Studios and Bethesda appear to be at the heart of over the “quality standard” asserted by Hines. An IGN investigation with multiple sources familiar with the history of the game reported that the game was mostly complete in 2011. Human Head just needed the time to finish and polish the game for its planned 2012 release.

According to IGN’s sources, Bethesda began “playing hardball” in an attempt to buy out Human Head Studios because it was one of the few studios that “could work with an improve id Technology,” the backbone of many of Bethesda’s studios following its purchase of id Software in 2009.

Bethesda reportedly withheld funding from Human Head to complete the game. In turn, the developer stopped work on Prey 2. Eventually, the contract between the two companies ran out and ownership of the title reverted back to Bethesda. There were rumors at one time that Dishonored developer Arkane Studios was working on Prey 2, but they never bore out.

Are you disappointed by the cancellation of Prey 2 or did it already drop off your radar? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Bethesda Softworks]