Fast-paced action games and Japanese developer PlatinumGames go together like peanut butter and jelly. Nearly every one of the studio’s projects has fallen into the action category, but that might change in the future. With the developer increasing in size and prominence, it has gotten closer to having the freedom to do exactly what it wants without the need for approval from a publisher. The team’s co-founder and Executive Director Atsushi Inaba recently explained some of his thoughts about the future of Platinum.
In speaking with USgamer, Inaba said:
As we mentioned before, it’s not like we are of the stance of, ‘Oh, we’re an action game maker.’ We want to invent new things for the gaming world. So for me, absolutely. I would very much like the opportunity to make something like that. Something that necessarily isn’t an action game. Maybe it’s a racing game, or maybe it’s something else.
Chinese company Tencent recently invested a sum of money into PlatinumGames, though the developer does not want this to have an impact on its creative freedom. Inaba explained:
We absolutely do not want to be told anything by Tencent or to be controlled by them. ‘Hey, please make this game. Okay, we will.’ No, we choose what kind of games we want to make. We want to make that very clear, but that being said, opening the Tokyo office allows us more staff and more opportunities to pursue new things that we want to do. We have to refuse a lot of offers, so in doing the Tokyo office we are looking forward to the new opportunities that it will provide.
PlatinumGames is getting closer to its goal of being completely independent and given its recent success and explosion in popularity, this might happen sooner rather than later. Even though it wants to experiment with non-action games in the future, there are still games that fall into that category on the horizon—the recently Kickstarted The Wonderful 101: Remastered will be out for PS4 in May 2020, as well as the PS4 exclusive Babylon’s Fall, which will launch at an unknown date. The developer has other projects in the works, as well. It recently opened up a new studio in Tokyo to focus on live-service games.
It’s unclear if it will indeed start working on a non-action game soon, but one thing is for sure: Platinum fans have a lot to look forward to in the developer’s future.
[Source: USgamer]