– PlatinumGames’ Atsushi Inaba on why he wants to work on self-publishing original IPsDuring an interview with Game Informer, PlatinumGames’ head of development Atsushi Inaba expressed his interest in making a completely original game, saying, “We’re becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title.” Inaba mentions how up until recently, the team had worked on properties for a variety of different publishers.
When asked what the process of self-publishing would look like Inaba described how over the past year, “We’ve pretty much opened the company up to ‘Anybody can pitch a game,’ and so over the last year we’ve gotten about 70 design documents from different people.”
“So this year has been about us basically diluting which stuff we wanted to focus on and not focus on, and drilling down to the point where we now have two designs that we’re genuinely focused on,” Inaba explains.
With the desire to create a game the entire team is motivated to work on comes with its challenges, especially when opening up the floor for pitches.
“That being said, if you’re going to put 20 people on the development, it has to be something that’s on brand and on topic, and obviously when people think of the PlatinumGames brand, they expect crazy hardcore action, right,” Inaba says. “We have to be reticent of that. We want to surprise them by the fact that we’re doing this independent title and hopefully get support from the fanbase.”
According to Inaba, Platinum will continue to work on triple-A games with publishers because there would be too much financial risk to do only self-published games without a major source of income.
“Doing something on our own, self-publishing it, releasing it, all of that is a challenge for us, but right now everybody is incredibly motivated and working on that.”
Check out the full interview available at Game Informer.