Marvelous has announced that their 3DS game, Kaio: The King of Pirates, has been cancelled.

What happened?

There’s no official word yet on why the project has been permanently shelved, but rumor has it the game’s development was costing far too much for what was going to be delivered. A NeoGaf thread cites a figure of around 461 million yen (around $3.8 million) in development costs so far.

That’s not a huge amount compared to many AAA game budgets, but for a 3DS title from a smaller publisher, that’s a pretty significant sum.

I didn’t hear much about this game, what was it supposed to be?

The game was supposed to be an action-RPG for the 3DS, featuring multiplayer support and over 300 playable characters. The game’s biggest draw though was its director, Keiji Inafune.

Inafune is a legend in the game dev world, co-creating Mega Man for Capcom in the 80s, and later producing the Lost Planet and Dead Rising series.

Aside from that, we surprisingly don’t know much about the game, aside from what we saw in a CG announcement trailer released in 2011, which showed off a cast of animal characters.

This game has been in development since 2011?

Yeah, it’s been quite a journey, although not one that the fans have shared in, considering we’ve heard almost nothing about the project since its original announcement.

That is, aside from the game getting pushed back from its original 2012 release date, missing its subsequent 2013 release date, and finally once again getting delayed until 2014. It looks like three times was enough to kill this project though, and publisher Marvelous has finally pulled the plug.

What’s Keiji Inafune going to work on now?

Inafune is currently working on a game called Mighty No. 9, which was crowdfunded on Kickstarter to the tune of over $4 million. That game is currently scheduled to be released next month.