The Übermensch of hack n slash video games, developer for NieR:Automata, PlatinumGames is going through quite a drastic shift right now. They're planning to upsize their workforce and hired a former Nintendo director, Takao Yamane as their Vice President, whom will foresee Platinum's publishing run. Even more, they have more planned projects for sequels and new upcoming IPs.
First for a lot of things. PlatinumGames has never done any publishing before, but after hiring Yamane, they're dead-set on going for it. This is mostly a move to let PlatinumGames finally expand themselves, fair given that they've been around for over a decade and had made so many game games for various publishers. But to sustain themselves and be part of something bigger, this was I believe the feasible way for them to grow.
My faith in them has been questionable as of late. Yes, they have made throw-away trash like the Legend of Korra video game adaptation and recently Babylon's Fall. But they're now adamant on making more games that have live service monetization. There's a lot to unpack now, and to start off, I want to talk about how a studio like this dared to push themselves close to bankruptcy several times just for their creative freedom.
Once a studio that was hotch-potched of multiple big talents from Capcom, Clover Studio made games such as Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, and Okami. Comprised of big leads, including Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiwa, and Atsushi Inaba. Sad thing to say is, none of their major games have actually sold really well, though given time, they would slowly become cult-classics. Capcom eventually dissolved the studio, from there things became interesting as time went by.
Inaba, Kamiya, and Mikami still wanted to make games, and so made their own studio, Seeds Inc was formed by all 3 of them, and Odd Inc founded by Tatsuya Minami was also made after he quit Capcom. In 2007, both companies merged to make PlatinumGames. And thus the greatest game studio was born.
You probably know the rest by now. They made great games like Bayonetta, Vanquish, Wonderful 101, and would go on to make big selling games like NieR: Automata, and Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. Also, some of us may have forgotten this, but they even worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle brawler, and made a badass Transformer game called Devastation.
Badass, yes that pretty much sums their games. While they always had an aptitude of making sheer phenomenal games, the sad truth is they aren't good at tapping the market with it and for the past few years, have slowly starting working on projects that requires the breadth of most of their employees to make. Mikami left to make Tango Gameworks with Bethesda right after Bayonetta. Signaling maybe a slow demise, but all that seems to be changing about now.
Two things to keep in mind, PlatinumGames has a partnership with Tencent, and games like Babylon's Fall are just the start of them making contract games that involves a lot of sleazy corporate stuff. At first, it would seem like this is just to keep things afloat, but with Yamane now hired, they have a lot of big plans.
He thinks the studio is understaffed, so the first major plan in expansion is having up to 500 employees working under them. This could also be people acting at their interest as a publisher, but there's also the matter of them in announcement stating they have several projects in the works.
One of them being; Project G.G. which is dubbed to be the final trilogy of Hideki Kamiya's superhero games after Viewtiful Joe, and Wonderful 101. This project is slated to be announced in June next year, in the US. Just to be clear, Kamiya's last game was Scalebound, which was sadly cancelled, and he hasn't directed a game since.
Since then, he has expressed interest in reviving that with Microsoft, kind of hard to believe it at first, but the man is dead set on it. Very resolute of it, and kind of lines up maybe with the recent rumors that PlatinumGames once again might work for them on a different title. The guy speculating it has been proved to be reliable with information before.
I want to end this by saying, yeah, I think it's good that PG is finally going bigger. But either that will reap the benefits from either making good games or shoddy ones that from third-party contracts such as anime studio like MAPPA have been doing for the past few years. I am pretty worried, Yamane's plan seem to indicate that he wants the developer to work on games for cashing out only, while delaying or stomping on their creative pursuits.
Maybe there wasn't much of an alternative they could have worked for, in that case, I hope they do reap from whatever they work on to make as many badass games as possible. Bayonetta 3 is coming out this year, I can't wait, but am also cautious about the future too.
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