Namco Pulls Splatterhouse from Developer Bottlerocket?

Unconfirmed reports say the nearly finished project has been given to another team.

Coming just days after Namco Bandai showed off their Splatterhouse reboot at the New York City Comic Con, rumor now has it that the publisher has pulled the nearly-completed game from current developer Bottlerocket, and handed it off to the Afro Samurai team.

Kotaku reports that several sources "through the San Diego-area dev community" (though none coming directly out of San Diego-based Bottlerocket) have said Namco officially pulled the game from them on Friday, taking back all dev kits and assets and supposedly giving them to the Afro Samurai team for completion. No specific possibilities for why Namco would want to switch developers this late in development were given.

According to one source, members of the Afro Samurai team have been involved with the development of Splatterhouse for some time already, as some animators were reportedly sent to Bottlerocket to help out with the workload. Evidently the two teams didn't jive well (this according to an unnamed source "familiar with the situation"), and now the Afro team is in control of the project entirely. Other rumored details are that the new team will continue to be based in the Bottlerocket building, with the possibility of some Bottlerocket team members being hired back to the new team.