Nier Automata and Bayonetta developer Platinum Games are working on two new indie titles.
“We’re looking into creating our own IP, creating our own game,” Head of development Atsushi Inaba told GameInformer “We’re becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title.”
During 2017, studio staff was encouraged to pitch new ideas for new games. As a result, they’ve come up with 70 different game ideas from different people. After a few debates, polls and re-focusing, Platinum Games narrowed it down to two designs.
Since these new games will be self-published, they won’t be AAA games.
“We can’t put together a AAA, $10 million-plus game, because we just don’t have that sort of cash as an independent developer,” Inaba continued. “However, we don’t plan to go the indies route with just a few people on a team making a game, so it’ll be somewhere in the middle, looking at probably about 20 people on the staff making the game.”
However, just because they will be relatively smaller games, that doesn’t mean they won’t include the over-the-top, insane action we’re used to getting from Platinum Games.
“If you’re going to put 20 people on the development, it has to be something that’s on brand and on topic, and obviously when people think of the Platinum Games brand, they expect crazy hardcore action, right? That’s what they’re looking for.”
Inaba continues to say they want to surprise their fanbase, but not by shifting away from the themes and genres their fans love about their games.
“We don’t want to surprise them by, say, doing a princess-clothing-making game or something like that. It would totally not be what people want from Platinum Games.”
It could have been very entertaining to see what Platinum Games can do with a princess-clothing-making game. I don’t know if I would have played it, but now I kind of want such a game to exist.
If you’re worried that developing two indie titles would somehow hurt the studio’s bigger games (like the recently announced Bayonetta 3) – don’t be. Inaba reassures fans that the “style and the size and scope” of these two games aren’t big enough to compete with the work they do for other publishers.
It should be interesting to see what Platinum Games will come up with when working on their own. We already know it’s going to be an action game, but it could be anything, from robots punching each other, to fast-paced and tight shooters.
So what are you hoping to see from Platinum Games?
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