PlatinumGames has announced a new Tokyo studio that will develop live service games, unlike its usual single-player experiences.
This news arrives as the third of four planned announcements from the developer. The studio launch was teased in Wednesday’s Project G.G. announcement without much information until today.
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Executive Vice President and Studio Head of PlatinumGames, Atsushi Inaba, explained the developer’s goal is to develop games that continue to evolve past a released version:
“So far, the name PlatinumGames has been nearly synonymous with single-player action games. But going forward, we’re looking to expand into new genres and styles of play. One of these new challenges for us is console live ops game development. These aren’t games we’d work on until they were done, and that’s all – rather, we’d continue working on them to provide new content long after release. We want to explore this ongoing development pattern in the home console space.
“Our new Tokyo office will play a major role as we expand into live ops game development. The starting core members of our future live ops team who’ll be working there are already a part of PlatinumGames.”
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Platinum’s first announced game out of the Tokyo studio will be Hideki Kamiya’s Project G.G, which was announced yesterday. While that game has no genre formally announced, it feels unlikely that it would be a live service game, given it’s a spiritual follow-up to Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101 – both of which are self-contained single player action games.
The website revealing the studio also dives into four interviews with PlatinumGames Tokyo developers. Game designer, Takahisa Sugiyama, spoke about the immediate feedback you get from live service games:
“Right after you release a content update, you can immediately jump over to social media and start reviewing user reactions. When the reactions are negative, that’s obviously not so much fun, but when they’re positive, it can really motivate your work.”
It’s unknown what the fourth and final announcement will be for Platinum’s slate of reveals. The first was a release date for The Wonderful 101: Remastered and the second was Project G.G.
At this time, The Wonderful 101: Remastered Kickstarter is up to $1,782,457 with eight days remaining.
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Source: IGN.com PlatinumGames' New Studio Will Develop Very Different Games for the Company