If anyone would know that, it’s Platinum Games. Whether it’s Bayonetta or even Anarchy Reigns, the studio has churned out a string of original titles over the past decade. That isn’t easy.
In the most recent Weekly Famitsu, the magazine celebrates the studio’s tenth year anniversary. Platinum Games talks about how things have changed over the past decade as it went from a staff of 60 to its current 180 or so, tripling in size.
“We used to have the idea that we wanted to be a studio that only made 100 per cent original games,” Platinum Games CEO Tatsuya Minami told Famitsu. “However, it turns out that only doing that is considerably difficult, and so now we take on various work.”
If you look at the studio’s chronology, you’ll see how from 2009 to 2012, it did churn out original titles only. In 2013, it released Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Ever since then, Platinum Games has also done gun for hire work alongside its own original titles.
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Launching original games isn’t easy. Over the years, Plantium Games has taken some big risks with new titles. Some have paid off, like Bayonetta, while others have not. While titles like Anarchy Reigns didn’t post the sales figures Platinum Games wanted, they were interesting and different. Adding in established franchises in the mix, enabling the studio to alternate being something everyone knows and something that is brand new, offers more stability. It allows for the studio to try something like The Wonderful 101, providing a safety net of sorts, while established franchises ensure that the lights stay on.
That’s smart. The outside work can often still feel like a Platinum title and help show how wide the studio’s range has become. Eiro Shirahama, who’s a game director at Platinum, explains, “The IP holders also are like ‘Let Platinum Games do what they do for the action parts,’ so we are given tremendous freedom with development.”
As other Japanese game makers seem to be bailing on consoles, Platinum continues to produce a steady stream of titles. This year alone, Platinum is slated to release four titles: Star Fox Zero, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan and Nier: Automata. It’s also working with Shigeru Miyamoto on his odd, but cool Wii U title Project Guard. Next year, Platinum Games is following all this up with an original title, Scalebound.
Throughout the interview, Platinum Games stresses that the way they make games hasn’t changed. I agree. Fundamentally, they haven’t.
But don’t look for Platinum Games to slow down anytime soon. Minami explains that there’s always the goal of becoming one of the three top game studios in the world. This isn’t all talk, but motivation. Says Minami, “If you don’t have that kind of feeling, you can’t keep on going. Ten, twenty years from now, I want to aim even higher.”
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Comments
9 responses to “Platinum Games: ‘Making Only Original Titles Is Very Difficult’”
I loved Anarchy Reigns!!!
I did not. But I did appreciate what it was trying to do, even if I don’t feel it did it well enough to keep my interest.
Vanquish was awesome…. need it to go BC
Buy Platinum’s games.
Am I the only one who doesn’t have a raging boner for PG?
Yes.
*rages*
Yeah man what’s wrong with you.
I’d say I’ve only got a semi, if we’re sticking with the metaphor. They’ve made some great games, but they’ve also made some pretty average ones.
This is one of my concerns with Platinum being involved in so many games. Already I’m starting to see their systems are becoming adaptations of Vanquish and Bayonetta’s (which was already technically adapted from Devil May Cry due to the director) systems. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as they’re good systems and they do introduce game world relevant mechanics but I’m worried that their games are going to be too samey if they take on too much because coming up with new systems would require more resources and time than they can afford.