Platinum Games Planning To Self-Publish New IP Alongside Bayonetta 3
Platinum Games is planning to develop and self-published a new IP (intellectual property) alongside "Bayonetta 3." This is according to the studio's head of development and producer Atsushi Inaba who said that they are interested in doing and self-publishing their own title.
"One of the things Platinum is focused on is we're looking into creating our own IP, creating our own game," Inaba said in an interview with Game Informer. "Up until now, obviously we've worked on original IPs for a wide variety of publishers. But we're becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title."
In recent years, Platinum has taken an "anybody can pitch a game" approach to developing to foster creativity in the studio. In the past year alone, they already received about 70 design documents from different people which would have been more if they considered other random ideas.
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The studio's approach seems to be targeting the middle market, which over the years has become a largely underserved section of the video game industry. This decision seems to have stemmed from the inherent issues in self-publishing particularly in terms of funding.
"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," he added. "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."
Platinum currently has 200 employees which will likely be split in developing the new IP along with their other projects, particularly the Switch-exclusive "Bayonetta 3." According to Inaba, they will start development with a team of around 20 people and have already whittled down the many proposed ideas to two potential designs.
No release date for the new IP has been released however they did reveal that it will be helmed by a new director not affiliated with their previous titles. Hopefully, though, it doesn't follow the same fate as Platinum's Xbox exclusive "Scalebound" which was canceled by Microsoft roughly one year ago.
