Square Enix boss calls Activision "crazy" for dropping True Crime: Hong Kong

Square Enix can't fathom how Activision let True Crime: Hong Kong go - in fact, it thinks Activision was "crazy" to do it.

Square Enix US boss Mike Fischer told VentureBeat United Front Studios' open world action game, since resurrected under the new moniker Sleeping Dogs for release this year, was too good a game to pass up.

"I can't speak to why they let that go. I'm not going to speculate on their behalf. All I know is, they've gotta be crazy," Fischer said.

"The scale and scope of the game really encompasses all of everything you'd want to do in Hong Kong. The acting, the story, the characters are very deep.

"The minute they showed it to us, we really felt like we had found a diamond in the rough."

Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg, the man who ditched the game, tells a different story of course. In February 2011 he claimed True Crime: Hong Kong wasn't up to snuff, stating: "Even our most optimistic internal projections show that continued investment was not going to lead to a title at, or near, the top of the competitive open world genre.

"In an industry where only the best games in each category are flourishing, to be blunt, it just wasn't going to be good enough."

Christian Donlan wrote in his Eurogamer preview of True Crime: Hong Kong: "as the game nears release, True Crime is looking unambitious at best, and possibly irrelevant."

We'll find out if the rebranding, new publisher and extra development time has changed the troubled title from a "diamond in the rough" to a regular diamond when Sleeping Dogs launches on 17th August.