PlatinumGames On the Studio's New Strategy & Working with Publishers
PlatinumGames shared that working for publishers prevents the studio from expressing itself which is one of the reasons why it decided to change its strategy and start publishing its own games.
In a recent interview with VGC, the CEO of the Japanese studio PlatinumGames Atsushi Inaba, vice president Hideki Kamiya, and the company's new vice president and CBO Takao Yamane spoke about the closure of Babylon's Fall, resurgence of Scalebound, the studio's future, and the reasons why it decided to change its direction.
When Yamane who previously worked at Nintendo joined PlatinumGames, the studio announced that it was going to "change significantly". Speaking to VGC, the head of the company explained that the studio's plans include not only creating games as it previously did but also communicating to the studio's user base as well as publishing games.
While PlatinumGames has already published two titles, The Wonderful 101 Remastered and Sol Cresta, the executives noted that this experience was "pretty much like a practice run" for the company and they hope to bring their publishing efforts to a whole new level in the future and believe that Yamane joining the company will help them move forward in this direction.
Yamane also noted that even when he worked at Nintendo, he always felt that PlatinumGames looked like "bad boys" of gaming and he also sees it now. He jokingly said that PlatinumGames is the studio that "doesn’t listen to what they’re told" and therefore working with publishers was often accompanied by creative differences.
The executives brought Babylon's Fall which is closing less than a year after its launch as an example of why PlatinumGames has changed its strategy and is going to publish its own games in the future.
The executives said that they comment on the game's content or "any kind of pertinent situations to do with the title" as they are not allowed to do this as they don't own this IP and have some obligations to the publisher. They shared that they see it as one of the reasons why they're "not fond of [this] current situation that only limits [the studio] to game development."
The company believes that working for publishers prevents it from expressing itself, and said that unfortunately, all questions about Babylon's Fall should be directed to Square Enix. The executives also apologized to those fans of the studio who could be disappointed by the fate of Babylon's Fall.
The executives were also asked about Scalebound's revival, however, they said they can't really comment on it either. Earlier this year, PlatinumGames publicly shared their desire to return to the development of Scalebound, the dragon-buddy exclusive for Xbox that was canceled in 2017 saying: "Phil! [Spencer] Let’s do it together!" However, later the head of Xbox said that "there’s currently nothing to say about Scalebound."
Speaking of Spencer's reaction, Kamiya said that he was "not really sure where that reaction came from and what he was actually thinking" adding: "If in any way he has changed his mind in a positive way for us, then that’s something that we’re very happy about."
You can learn more about the studio's future plans by reading the full interview here. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
