Platinum Games looking to bring its games to PC

By: Muhammad Qasim Hassan

  |   September 27th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Platinum Games has established itself as a specialist of console games, but the studio is now looking to step into the PC space as well.

Atsushi Inaba, the executive director at the studio that brought us Bayonetta and Vanquish, conceded while speaking with Polygon at the Tokyo Game Show last week that Platinum Games is looking to move beyond consoles and expand the scope of development to bring the games to PC as well.

Creating games for the PC and releasing them through Valve’s Steam service is something that the studio is strongly considering, explained Inaba.

He further went on to add that Platinum Games is also planning to fund its new projects through Kickstarter, thus saving it the trouble of going out on a hunt for a publisher who would be interested in financing the project and also allowing the studio to enjoy greater freedom.

The studio is not working on any PC game current, revealed the executive director, explaining that working under a publisher primarily gives the latter the authority to call the shots regarding what platform the game gets developed for.

“We haven’t released anything on Steam yet, or any PC games for that matter, so I’m not in a position to encourage other people to do so,” Inaba said. “However, I used to belong to a big publisher [Capcom]. And if you’re at a big publisher, business gets carried on just seeing your game on console. Many publishers don’t view PC as an important platform.”

Inaba explained that the development budget for a console game is really high and thus makes them heavily dependent on the support from a publisher. However, it is possible for them to take on the responsibility of both development as well as publishing of a project for PC with the help of Kickstarter.

Commenting on the console market in Japan and comparing it with the rest of the world, he said that consoles are not doing as good in the region as they are doing elsewhere.

The PC market, according to his opinion, is an area with a huge potential and therefore the studio is keen on capitalising on the opportunity by stepping into the space.

The developer told Polygon that he had already paid a visit to Valve after he went to Seattle to attend PAX Prime. He kept the details of the meeting under wraps, though admitting that the discussion regarding the future goals and direction that the company was looking to take took place. The only thing he shared was the impression that he got of Valve, calling the company very open-minded.

Platinum Games is working on a number of projects at the moment, which include Bayonetta 2 exclusively for Wii U, The Wonderful 101 also for Nintendo’s upcoming console and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.