PlatinumGames’ has gained quite the following over the past eleven years from working on a variety of critically acclaimed action-oriented games, but all of them were published by another studio or based on an already established IP. Although they have teased it before, Head of Development and Producer Atsushi Inaba confirmed to GameInformer in an interview that the company is actively looking into creating and self-publishing their own IP.
This certainly will be an interesting experience for the studio, as even IPs like Bayonetta that are heavily associated with PlatinumGames are still technically published by companies like Nintendo, so PlatinumGames has technically never had complete control over a project themselves. Inaba-san also explains that over the past year, PlatinumGames has accepted over 70 design documents internally for new game pitches, but have now narrowed things down to two concepts that they may choose to pursue:
One of the things Platinum is focused on is we’re looking into creating our own IP, creating our own game. Up until now, obviously we’ve worked on original IPs for a wide variety of publishers. We’ve also worked on other Hollywood IPs for other publishers as well. But we’re becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title.
Over the last year we’ve pretty much opened the company up to “Anybody can pitch a game,” and so over the last year we’ve gotten about 70 design documents from different people. And if you’re going list out the other random ideas, the scratched stuff on paper, that’s a hell of a lot more. So this year has been about us basically diluting which stuff we wanted to focus on and not focus on, and drilling down to the point where we now have two designs that we’re genuinely focused on.
As for the size of the game in question, Inaba-san claims that the project will likely have a development team of around 20 people, and will be somewhere between an indie game and AAA title in scope:
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. 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, so that’ll still be a healthy [size].
If you are worried that PlatinumGames’ typical action-oriented flair will be diluted, Inaba-san confirmed that they are still aware that of what their fans expect from them:
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 PlatinumGames brand, they expect crazy hardcore action, right? That’s what they’re looking for. And so we have to be reticent of that. We want to surprise them by the fact that we’re doing this independent title and hopefully get support from the fanbase. But 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 PlatinumGames.
Inaba-san ended off the interview by reaffirming that PlatinumGames will continue to make AAA games with other publishers as they “don’t have the cash flow to take on the risk to only do self-published games.” I think that’s a good thing though, as we’ll still get awesome titles like the upcoming Bayonetta 3 alongside whatever this new IP ends up being.