Well, it happened.
MegaMan Legends 3 was cancelled (which also explains why the release date attached to the PEGI rating for the downloadable prologue-game was never met).
I can't say I'm surprised. The prior three Legends series games (MegaMan Legends, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and MegaMan Legends 2) all caused losses, and I was amazed they were even considering trying to make another installment to begin with.
I do feel bad for the Legends fans (though I will say that they never waited as long as some of us did for a new installment
), and I do think it's a shame that we won't see this one, but anyone with any remote, vague understanding of how business is supposed to work saw this result coming. It was obvious from the moment that it was revealed (some months after the game was "announced") that the team responsible had in fact not gotten the green-light for production (and were later turned down, but given extra time to make something better) - it feels as though they used an awful lot of people in an attempt to try to sell something that has three times proven to be unsaleable.
That said, I can't really say I'll miss it, either (though it is undoubtedly a shame that the prologue-game, which housed bosses and other things created by winners of the contests run in the "Dev Room" feature - will not be released, especially since it was actually scheduled to be released a mere couple of weeks ago). It rankled quite a bit to see the Legends series (that is, a sub-series that has long proven itself unprofitable - this is precisely why they never made MegaMan Legends 3 back in the early 2000s!) getting all-star treatment and a then-possible new retail installment, when the original (or "Classic") series (which to my knowledge is a more valuable property and has never caused losses like the Legends series did) got really shabby treatment for its comeback, in the form of the big comeback games being poxy downloadables with additional anti-customer practices thrown in (i.e., having to pay a large chunk more for extras in order to get the entire game's worth of content - something I didn't do), and with no real fuss made for them on Capcom's part.
It is interesting to see the "internet echo chamber effect" in play with this, though. I've already seen comments where people were convinced that the game had a ton of interest and would have sold in great numbers (I'm guessing these folks weren't aware of the Legends series' 100% loss-making history), and where the reality of the fact that stuff that won't sell is cancelled all the time was unwelcome.