BottleRocket: Namco was "inept"

After Namco Bandai claimed that it had to pull its Splatterhouse remake from developer BottleRocket for "performance" reasons, the studio has hit back, calling the publisher "inept".

BottleRocket says that it never missed any of the development milestones in its contract.

"We too have to be careful of what we say since publishers have to worry about their 'image' and will sue small, independent studios who bark back at them too loudly," BottleRocket told Gamasutra in a statement.

"Splatterhouse had been in development for over eighteen months and up to having the title taken away from us, we had not missed any contractually-defined milestones. So either there were no performance issues during that timeframe or Namco's management of the title was inept."

Splatterhouse was taken off BottleRocket's hands last month, despite being in its final months of development. The game was due for release on 360 and PS3.

BottleRocket, formed around the team that made the cult PS2 action games Mark of Kri and Rise of the Kasai, has moved on to an as-yet-unannounced new project. Namco will reportedly complete Splatterhouse in-house.