You’ve heard of Platinum Games, don’t even pretend you haven’t. They’re the men and women behind Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, Nier, and a handful of other titles. Thing is, all those games were developed with funding from the big cheeses in the industry. In light of that, Platinum Games has taken the plunge and is looking at making games in-house.
“One of the things Platinum is focused on is we’re looking into creating our own IP, creating our own game,” said producer and head of development Atsushi Inaba in an interview with GameInformer. “Up until now, obviously we’ve worked on original IPs for a wide variety of publishers… we’re becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title.”
More than just “interested” – they’ve started. After taking company-wide pitches from anyone who wanted to submit one, they narrowed it down to a couple they liked. These won’t be wallet-nabbing AAA super-action games because the company doesn’t have that kind of budget, but neither will they go indie with teeny tiny development teams working on faith and enthusiasm. Platinum Games’ average team size will be around 20 people.
When they do release their own game, it will be the same quality and intensity fans expect of a PG project.
“When people think of the Platinum Games brand, they expect crazy hardcore action, right?” Inaba says. “That’s what they’re looking for. And so we have to be reticent of that. We want to surprise them by the fact that we’re doing this independent title…. But we don’t want to surprise them by, say, doing a princess-clothing-making game or something like that.”
And don’t worry – we’ll still see those familiar AAA titles published by those familiar big cheeses. Again, that’s because they lack the budget to afford taking all the risks of going full-on self-publishing. Platinum Games is also confident the decision will not adversely affect their relationship with larger publishers due to that very reason. They’re essentially developing for different, and therefore non-competing, markets.
So keep an eye on Platinum, and look forward to new games that don’t involve knitting clothes.