Developers Bayonetta and NieR: Automata from the Japanese studio PlatinumGames will no longer transfer intellectual rights to their projects to publishers. The studio does not want to depend on the customer’s requests during development.
PlatinumGames made this decision after a sad experience of cooperation with Microsoft. When the Xbox owners refused to develop the Scalebound role-playing game, which PlatinumGames had been running for four years, the developers were on the verge of bankruptcy. The company was saved only by the success of NieR: Automata.
PlatinumGames are also unhappy that it depends on the publishers whether the developers will get the opportunity to work on the sequel of their game. The studio wants to decide for itself what to do, and not compromise, explained PlatinumGames Development Director Atsushi Inaba (Atsushi Inaba).
Sometimes everything depends on publishers. To have control over your game, you have to finance and develop it yourself. This will give you great freedom and a variety of options
PlatinumGames Development Director
This does not mean that PlatinumGames cuts off all ties with previous customers and will never make games under someone else’s license again. The studio is ready to take on such projects, but only if it gets a real opportunity to develop the series and bring something new to it.
So far there are no such offers, so PlatinumGames have put all their efforts into their own development – mobile action World of Demons, which will be distributed using a frituplay model, which is unusual for a company that has previously been engaged in premium projects.
The game will also have a third–party publisher – DeNA, but, as Inaba stressed, no one limited the studio in development, the roles of partners were clearly distributed: “We did what we understand, and DeNA did what they understand.”
Also on the topic:
- Digital and retail sales of Nier: Automata exceeded 2 million copies
- 100 thousand copies of Bayonetta sold on Steam in the first week
A source: Gamesindustry