Platinum Games to begin self publishing their future titles, teases two unannounced games
Platinum Games seems to be ready for the big leagues, as the developer is gearing up for major releases, and a move towards self publishing. In an interview, Platinum's CEO, Atsushi Inaba commented that the company has grown frustrated due to an inability to control its developed games after launch. According to Inaba, when it came to titles like Vanquish or Madworld, publishing company SEGA was strict over letting them move forward with those specific IPs, and that they were unable to create a sequel to Bayonetta until Nintendo stepped in and helped Bayonetta 2 and 3 become a reality.
It’s that simple, and quite frankly in the case of Bayonetta it took a lot of time and energy to get it to the point where sequels could be made. It wasn’t as simple as picking up the phone and asking, ‘hey, can we do this?’ There were a lot of pieces that needed to fall into place and a lot of negotiating that had to occur. [...] It's absolutely the truth that there are cases where you want to do a sequel but if you don't own the IP, you can't do it.
Though they are currently working on titles such as Bayonetta 3, Astral Chain, and Granblue Fantasy: Relink, which are all being published by other studios, Inaba hopes to spend 2019 preparing Platinum Games for a future where all its games will be self-published. In addition to this, there are two brand new unannounced games currently being worked on, both of them set to be self-published. Neither title was revealed, but Inaba claimed that "the game we're working on truly is unlike anything else", likely referring back to a title that he previously teased back in 2018 as "[something] that would turn the action genre on its head".
Right now we’re in the middle of designing something that has never been done before. I know a lot of people say that, but the game we’re working on truly is unlike anything else. Even for our varied history of veteran game developers, this is something that has never been designed before. So from a game design perspective, we’re very excited right now.
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