David-NelsonPlatinum Games has a plan to keep the action coming your way for a long time to come by finding the right mix of East and West to command better sales.
In an in-depth interview with Polygon , which we recommend reading in full, Platinum President Tatsuya Minami talks Revengeance , Bayonetta , and the future hope of growing sales.
"We're expecting Metal Gear Rising to sell better than Bayonetta, and obviously it's just come out. But if you look at games developed in certain Western studios, as far as sales go, they're clearly ahead of us there, and we're not going to be satisfied until we're at that level," said Minami.
Platinum plans to reach that level with a strategy that at first sounds unnervingly familiar:
"We have to think a lot about what resonates with consumers globally and find that secret sauce and make sure that goes into our games. And there's a lot of places we need to look for that: it's not just in art, it's also in game design, it's also in music … I think the one thing that we want more than anything in the immediate future — and it's something we continue to work hard on — is we definitely want people to understand that we're making games here in Japan, but we're making games for everybody."
We probably shouldn't worry that they will "Westernize" too much, though. This quote taken together with Platinum's body of work suggests the developer would like to appeal to everyone, but doesn't plan to change their identity. I don't think any sane gamer could accuse games like Vanquish , Bayonetta , and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance of lacking Japanese flair.
And if it's more sales they are after, hopefully there was a clause in their contract with Nintendo to allow a version of Bayonetta 2 onto other consoles in the future.
Related Game(s): Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance , Bayonetta , Vanquish
