It was rumored before, but now it's confirmed: Namco Bandai have pulled developers Bottlerocket Entertainment from horror-gore title Splatterhouse. Namco says it had a "performance issue" with the studio, where BottleRocket's view of the events were more colorful:
The company issued a statement saying Namco "showed up with a U-Haul truck, took all [the team's] assets (dev kits, etc.) and informed management that the title was being pulled from Bottlerocket."
"The only reason why publishers pull the project out from the developer is when the developer isn't really meeting the requirements," Namco vice president Makoto Iwai said to Gamasutra. "So, unfortunately, this was the case...We have to be very careful so we don't make any direct comment on it because whatever we say, people will try to be on the developer side. You know, 'The developer is an independent developer trying hard, and evil publishers are trying to get rid of the business by doing whatever they feel like.' That's not the case. I just want to be 100 percent clear. There was a performance issue."
As for the game, Namco says they're still putting it out: "We are committed to bringing Splatterhouse to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later this year," but who's going to finish making it, isn't known yet.
