PlatinumGames

• 1. Introduction

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  PlatinumGames is a Japanese video game developer based in Osaka, and one of its founders once drew a surprisingly hard line about who belongs there. Atsushi Inaba put it this way: "the people who are not looking for constant change are not necessarily welcome in what I think the company should be." That restlessness produced MadWorld, Bayonetta and Nier: Automata, games with almost nothing in common except an obsession with action. Where did the studio's people come from? Why did a company built to invent new properties end up making games from other people's franchises? And what happens to a studio so tied to its founders when those founders start to leave?

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• 2. Clover's Survivors

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  Fifty-one employees made up the company that was growing out of Capcom's wreckage, and many of them were Capcom veterans. Seeds Inc. was founded on the 1st of August 2006 by Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya. All three had been key members of Clover Studio, an Osaka-based Capcom team created to make fresh, inventive properties. Together they had worked on Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Ōkami. Most of those games won critical acclaim but sold below expectations, and Capcom eventually closed the studio. The three founders had already left by mid-2006.

  Masami Ueda, who composed music for the early Resident Evil games, joined the new company. So did Mari Shimazaki, the artist behind Ōkami. Yusuke Hashimoto and Kenji Saito arrived during the founding period and would later become directors. The company announced itself by launching a website in February 2007.

  Tatsuya Minami had founded Odd Ltd. in February 2006, and it became Odd Inc. in July 2007. Minami had spent 20 years at Capcom, working on titles such as Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts and the Mega Man series. He left because he had grown tired of making sequels. When the two companies merged, Minami became head of the studio and took charge of management and administration, while Mikami, Inaba and Kamiya kept their roles as directors and producers. For a full year afterward, the new company said nothing about what it was making.

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• 3. Sega's Four Bets

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  Tatsuya Minami later called it courageous of Sega to publish such risky, unusual games. In 2008 Sega announced four PlatinumGames titles: MadWorld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta and Vanquish. Minami said the deal also gave the studio a route into Western markets. Every property created under the partnership belongs to Sega.

  MadWorld arrived first. Inaba produced it, and its black-and-white look borrowed from Sin City. Yasumi Matsuno, who had worked on Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics, wrote the original story. The team wanted a distinctive game for the Wii and aimed it at Western players. Reviews were positive, yet sales disappointed despite heavy marketing from Sega. In 2010 Sega said it would stop publishing mature games for the Wii and named MadWorld's weak sales as one reason. Several days later, PlatinumGames said it would like to make a sequel.

  Infinite Space was first announced as Infinite Line. It mixed role-playing, real-time strategy and space simulation, with inspiration from the writers Arthur C. Clarke and Greg Egan. The studio worked closely with Nude Maker on it. Japan received the game in June 2009 and the West in March 2010. Sales abroad fell short, and PlatinumGames blamed Sega for printing too few copies, saying the game "sold out instantly."

  The partnership announcement had teased a mystery fourth game from Mikami, and it turned out to be Vanquish. The team took visual cues from Casshern. Mikami settled on a third-person view through trial and error, hoping it would speed up play. Vanquish began as an open world game, but the team dropped that idea and made it linear. Critics called it innovative for what it added to the shooter genre. Soon after its release, Mikami left to found Tango Gameworks. Minami explained that Mikami "always wanted to be his own man, and his own developer."

  Talks to extend the Sega relationship were under way by late 2010, and in 2011 the studio announced Max Anarchy. Western players got it in 2012 as Anarchy Reigns. It followed MadWorld, though without the Sin City look, and players again controlled Jack Cayman for much of it. Reviews were mixed and sales were poor. It became the last game PlatinumGames and Sega made together.

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• 4. Bayonetta

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  "Team Little Angels" was the name on the credits of Bayonetta, a deliberate answer to the "Team Little Devils" credited on Devil May Cry. Hideki Kamiya directed it. He had first pitched several "casual" projects before committing to the game. Bayonetta was described as an action game "evolved" from Devil May Cry. Its story drew on Scandinavian mythology, and the lead character reflected Kamiya's own vision of an "ideal woman."

  Critics received it with acclaim, praising its action as "genre-topping" along with its characters and invention. Inside the studio, the mood was harsher. Inaba said the team had set an impossibly high bar and ended development extremely frustrated. In his words the project "nearly broke" PlatinumGames. Morale recovered only after players began sharing their delight with the game.

  Inaba also named the PlayStation 3 version the company's "biggest failure," because the team lacked the skills to build it properly. More than 1.35 million units shipped. That made Bayonetta one of the studio's most commercially successful games, yet Minami said the company was disappointed with the figure. The game later inspired an animated film, Bayonetta: Bloody Fate, released by Gonzo.

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• 5. Other People's Franchises

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  Hideo Kojima and his studio, Kojima Productions, found themselves stuck in 2011 while building a Metal Gear game around Raiden, a sword-wielding ninja. Unable to carry on, Kojima contacted Minami and asked PlatinumGames to take over. Kojima said the studio was the only one capable of making an action game built on sword combat. The team found the original system too plain and added stealth. Kenji Saito directed Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, released in 2013. Reviews were generally positive and it sold well. It was PlatinumGames' first licensed title.

  The studio had already taken on contract work for Activision, and most of those licensed projects drew mixed reviews. Inaba said the core goal remained original properties, but the team came to find them difficult and sometimes too risky, with disappointing sales. Minami said that alternating between licensed and original games gave the company stability. Partners generally let the studio design gameplay freely.

  The Legend of Korra, published by Activision in 2014, adapted Nickelodeon's animated series. Tim Hedrick, a writer on the show, wrote the story, and the game received mixed reviews. Transformers: Devastation followed in 2015, drawn from Hasbro's Transformers: Generations. Saito directed it, and the team set out to make it look and feel unlike earlier Transformers games. Reviews were favorable.

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan came in May 2016 and drew mixed reactions. Designer Eiro Shirahama said the team prepared by watching the animated series and replaying the old Turtles games from the Super Famicom.

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• 6. The Nintendo Years

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  The Wonderful 101 started out as a Wii game starring classic Nintendo characters. The team found it hard to use those characters creatively and put the project on hold. When development restarted, it featured 50 original characters instead and moved to the Wii U. Kamiya directed, with Minami offering creative advice. He took inspiration from tokusatsu series such as Super Sentai and aimed to please every kind of player. Nintendo gave feedback, hoping to widen the audience. Critics loved it, and fans ranked it among their Nintendo favorites. Even so, it sold poorly in Japan and was outsold by Pikmin 3. VG247 blamed the Wii U's weak sales.

  Bayonetta 2 was controversial because it was exclusive to the Wii U, unlike the multi-platform original. Inaba said the studio had first worked with Sega on the sequel. The project was cancelled midway, until Nintendo offered to fund and revive it, with Sega acting only as an advisor. Inaba compared Nintendo's role to that of an observer. Kamiya supervised the game while Yusuke Hashimoto took over as director, concentrating on refining combat and adding replay value. Several publications gave it perfect scores. Even so, it sold only 38,828 copies in Japan in its first week. It was the seventh best-selling retail game in the UK in its first week, then dropped sharply.

  Shigeru Miyamoto produced Star Fox Zero, hoping outside developers could shorten the development cycle. Nintendo asked PlatinumGames to co-develop it after seeing the Arwing stage of Bayonetta 2. Star Fox Zero and the tower defense spin-off Star Fox Guard arrived in April 2016 to mixed reviews. By the end of March 2016, Minami had stepped down as president and CEO, and executive producer Kenichi Sato replaced him. Nintendo also funded Astral Chain, which reached the Switch on the 30th of August 2019.

  A 2016 collaboration with Cygames on Granblue Fantasy: Relink ended in February 2019, when PlatinumGames left the project. Then Kamiya's Scalebound for Microsoft Studios was cancelled in January 2017. Creative producer Jean-Pierre Kellams left, and Kamiya stopped directing and became a vice president.

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• 7. Platinum 4 and Beyond

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  More than 2 million copies of Nier: Automata were sold, a number the studio had not seen in years. Yoko Taro, creator of the Nier series, directed it for Square Enix. It reached PlayStation 4 and Windows in 2017, with an Xbox One version in 2018. Kamiya said Taro had "saved" PlatinumGames after Scalebound was cancelled. Interest in the studio revived. In May 2017, Inaba said a new property was in the works, and at The Game Awards 2017 Bayonetta 3 was revealed as a Switch exclusive. Nier: Automata also won Best Score/Music there.

  In April 2018 the studio announced World of Demons with DeNA, a mobile action game set among Japanese folklore. Work had started in 2015 with 30 people, including staff from Star Fox Zero and Bayonetta 2. It soft launched in some countries in 2018 and left storefronts the next year. It returned on Apple Arcade on the 2nd of April 2021.

  In January 2020, Tencent Holdings invested in the studio, allowing it to publish its own games. CEO Kenichi Sato said the investment changed nothing about ownership and that Platinum stayed independent. On the 3rd of February 2020 it launched a website called "Platinum 4" with four announcements. These included a Kickstarter for a remastered The Wonderful 101, its first self-published title. They also included Project G.G., meant as the last of Kamiya's "hero" trilogy after Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101, this time around a giant hero. The third was PlatinumGames Tokyo, a studio of about 100 staff for live service games. The last was Sol Cresta, made with Hamster Corporation as the first of a "Neo-Classic Arcade" series, after an April Fools' joke in 2020.

  Chief technology officer Wataru Ohmori said the studio built its own engine, PlatinumEngine, because off-the-shelf options like Unreal or Unity gave too little control and performance. He spoke of a "frightening realization" that without greater efficiency, the studio could not keep making the games it wanted. Bayonetta 3 was one title using it.

  On the 13th of January 2022, Inaba succeeded Sato as CEO after Sato's five years and eight months in the role. On the 1st of November 2022, the studio announced a third base, PlatinumGames FUKUOKA. The studio also took primary development duties on Ninja Gaiden 4 for Koei Tecmo and Xbox Game Studios. On the 25th of September 2023, Kamiya announced he would leave on the 12th of October. By February 2025, Abebe Tinari, Takahisa Taura, Yusuke Miyata, Kenji Saito and Masaki Yamanaka had also seemingly left.

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• 8. Rules of Action

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  PlatinumGames hopes to be counted among "the three top game studios in the world." Though it is a Japanese company, the team tries to build in elements that appeal to a worldwide audience. Minami has said the studio is keen to work with both Japanese and Western publishers. He also insisted the company only made games its developers felt passionate about.

  Inaba described the studio as "loud." Everyone on a team may voice opinions on a project, and their vision is not meant to be watered down. Artists and programmers, not just game designers, are invited to give creative input. Saito said every game the company made carried a "Platinum taste," and that the studio learned from each project, applying it to new games and genres.

  The company also holds a short checklist for action games. A good one should be "passive" and have a "unique selling point." It should have replay value that lets players sharpen their skills, and a strong leading character. Most of all, it should not follow conventional design philosophy. The studio wants to bring new elements to both its own titles and licensed ones.

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