Why Alone in the Dark was almost tossed in the garbage

Atari was pretty close to scrapping the Alone in the Dark game when it was in the beginning stages of development. We all know the game is done now (albeit still vague on the PS3 version's release), so that didn't happen. But why was it almost canned? Atari dismissed the original concepts as pitched by the game's director, David Nadal, calling them "too ambitious". You can hear more from Nadal regarding the game and how much he loves the series over at CVG, but we just want to know when we can get in on the action. The PS3 version is set for a Fall release while the 360 gets it this Friday.