Platinum Wants to Create More Original IPs, Looking Into Self-Publishing

Platinum already received 70 design documents this past year.

News by Matt Kim, News Editor

2 January 2018

According to a new interview, PlatinumGames' head of development Atsushi Inaba explained that the company wants to venture more into original IPs owned and published by Platinum itself.

In a interview with GameInformer, Inaba revealed that Platinum sees a lot of potential in owning and publishing an original IP. This is something other studios have been looking into which has since been dubbed "Double-A" development in some circles.

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.

To facilitate this Platinum has adopted a "Anybody can pitch a game," philosophy in the past year.

[A]nd 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.

This sounds very much like the approach IO is taking with Hitman, or Ninja Theory took with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, an original IP created and self-published by Ninja Theory. The game became a financial success for the company, and Ninja Theory was able to keep the profits from the game for itself.

With the creative energy at Platinum, it's easy to imagine big rewards for the company if it can stick the landing and make an original IP as successful as games like Nier: Automata, which Platinum made with Yoko Taro and Square Enix.

Currently, PlatinumGames is presumably busy with working on various Bayonetta games for the Nintendo Switch. The studio is also riding high off the success of Nier: Automata which raised the profile of director Yoko Taro, created a new franchise for Square Enix, and "saved" PlatinumGames (according to Hideki Kamiya).

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