Along with multi-platform titles The Legend of Korra and Transformers: Devastation, developer Platinum Games has been working on exclusive titles, including Bayonetta 2 for Wii U, as well as the upcoming Nier: Automata for PlayStation 4 and Scalebound for Xbox One.
As Executive Director Atsushi Inaba explained to GameSpot, the reason they work on exclusive titles is to help create games they want to make:
We don’t have a specific stance towards console exclusives, but what we do have are games that we really want to make, and it’s very difficult now to find partners who are ready to make big bets on larger games like that. One of the ways that you can get a partner who will buy into that vision is to go into places, especially console makers who have hardware that they want to sell and want to make content that sticks out. A lot of times they will champion a product like that, so we’ve used that route to accomplish our goal of making these games that we want to make. Nier is a special case where the publisher [Square Enix] decided on the console exclusivity, and that was part of their business decision and that’s totally okay, but in the cases where we’ve created a console exclusive, that’s often been a case of us wanting to get a game made and not stopping until we’ve done that.
Even with 200 staff, there may be cause for concern that Platinum Games is too overworked right now. Inaba confirmed people raise this issue, but he added, “There’s a lot of things that we want to do. We’re given a lot of opportunities to do very interesting things and we structured the company around this idea that we want to say yes to those opportunities. That’s why we’re doing it.”
Elsewhere in GameSpot’s feature about Platinum Games, Inaba said they wanted to focus on the action genre in the first place because it was a strong suit for them. “But I think it’s less about being synonymous with action games and more about a lot of other studios that were previously synonymous with action games not really making action games anymore,” he said.
Despite their focus on action games, Nier: Automata Designer Yasuhisa Taura mentioned, “I also want to expand into other genres as well – it’s nice that we’re known for making cool action games, but we’d like to expand that retinue as well and see if we can do some more cool stuff.”
Star Fox Zero Director Yusuke Hashimoto looked at some of the games Platinum is creating, saying, “I’d also like to see some of our IPs grow more of a footing, instead of more or less one-shots, to see more of them become a series and foster them.” Hashimoto wants the priority to always be on making something new that hasn’t been done before, and “if that works within the respect of a new Bayonetta game, or a new Metal Gear Rising game, or something like that, that’s awesome. We should try that.”
Inaba finished up by saying he doesn’t think Platinum Games is at the position they want to be globally. There’s still a lot of work to be done before they’re known as a studio that continually makes high quality games, “so we’re not at the final form of what a successful Platinum Games studio would be,” he added.
[Source: GameSpot]
