Atsushi Inaba, CEO and President of Nier developer Platinum Games, expressed that the company’s creativity is being shifted away from “one-off, well designed” titles and toward “creating games that can be enjoyed and loved for a longer period of time.”
Inaba served as vice-president of Platinum Games until Kenichi Sato stepped down a month ago; his former position is filled by acclaimed action director Hideki Kamiya. Inaba has big plans for the studio, focusing on creating wholly owned new IP and continuing to craft new ways to play. In particular, he is very interested in the recent shift toward live-service games.
He cites the recent changes in the market as the impetus for this change of focus. The upcoming MMO-style action game Babylon’s Fall (supposedly coming in March) is the first game from Platinum with this “live ops” design in mind. Speaking with Famitsu (translated by VideoGamesChronicle), Inaba elaborated on this new direction for the studio.
“Of course, we would like to cherish and create small but brilliantly conceived games such as Sol Cresta, and games in which you can enjoy the process of clearing the game by going through one-off, well-designed stages, such as Bayonetta. However, the projects that we are trying to create for the future will be different in terms of their structure.”
One of these projects in development is Project GG, which serves both as Platinum’s first fully owned original IP and the “climax” to director Hideki Kamiya’s superhero trilogy, whose previous entries include Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101.
This isn’t the end of superbly polished single-player experiences from Platinum Games though. Launching later this month, the shoot ‘em up Sol Cresta serves as a sequel to 1980s arcade classics Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta. Also slated for this year is the long-gestating Bayonetta 3, which was announced nearly five years ago.