PlatinumGames is 'designing something that has never been done before'

Bayonetta and Nier: Automata developer PlatinumGames has said it's working on a secret project that is "unlike anything done before".

In an interview with VGC, studio head Atsushi Inaba intimated that 2019 will be "an incredibly important year" for the studio. While he wouldn't be drawn on what or how many games it has in development, he did reveal "it’s going to be a year of some major new approaches, new challenges and new methods for us"—and at least two of the projects will be "new independent IPs owned entirely by the studio".

“Right now we’re in the middle of designing something that has never been done before. I know a lot of people say that, but the game we’re working on truly is unlike anything else,” Inaba said. “Even for our varied history of veteran game developers, this is something that has never been designed before. So from a game design perspective, we’re very excited right now.”

While it seems the studio will always be interested in collaborations—"we have a lot of different choices in the way that we want to make games"—the studio seems committed to working on wholly-owned IPs and self-publishing for now.

“It’s absolutely the truth that there are cases where you want to do a sequel but if you don’t own the IP, you can’t do it,” Inaba said. “It’s that simple, and quite frankly in the case of Bayonetta it took a lot of time and energy to get it to the point where sequels could be made. It wasn’t as simple as picking up the phone and asking, ‘hey, can we do this?’ There were a lot of pieces that needed to fall into place and a lot of negotiating that had to occur.

“That’s a pain. That’s a hassle. For us as creators, we want to get to the point where self-publishing allows us to own our IP and do what we want with it, including making sequels. So the faster we can have that freedom, the better it will be for all the creators here.”