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[Ridley327]

Why are some people in this topic acting like Kamiya is head of PG?

I don't know, but he is by far the biggest personality that Platinum has in their roster. Inaba is the real brains of the operation, but he's always been a backroom dealer compared to the rest of the development teams he's headed, be they back at CPS4, Clover or at Platinum.

 

[ArtHands]

The problem is it hurts their brand with mainstream gamers when games like Star Fox, and Wonderful 101 bomb so for longevity in the gaming industry, while they get paid upfront for striking console exclusive deals, it doesn't allow them to get even more revenue by selling said games because they have limited themselves to such a small audience.

And I like Platinum's courage to support Nintendo at a point very few 3rd party studios ended up to so this isn't me waving the PS4 pom poms.

I dont think they have the money to self fund a multiplatform games (yet), so i dont think you are not talking sense at all. They were in bootstrap mode and taking works to keep the lights on, while saving up whatever profit from those works.

 

[BadWolf]

I don't know, but he is by far the biggest personality that Platinum has in their roster. Inaba is the real brains of the operation, but he's always been a backroom dealer compared to the rest of the development teams he's headed, be they back at CPS4, Clover or at Platinum.

He had a good start with Bayo but beyond that he hasn't done much worth mentioning that's successful.

W101 was a big bomb and Scalebound got cancelled.

So basically the rest of PG have been keeping the company alive for years now.

 

[ArjanN]

Automata is not hard to play compared to previous Platinum games. They went out of their way to make it more accessible for people, to the point where there's an Auto-chip available in Easy mode where your character can fight without you controlling them.

Honestly their other games arent very hard either if you just put them on a lower difficulty. The lowest difficulty for Bayonetta, Revengeance, Vanquish etc basically plays itself, and normal is usually also fine for anyone who's played a few videogames.

 

[Astral Dog]

High and deserved praise shame about Scalebound but it wasn't meant to be,good to see that game, MEtal Gear Rising cancellation and Wonderful 101 didn't shut Platinum down

Hope they can move to make better games next

😡

This thread eww 😷

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Nothing is immune from balance issues, and even "purer" character-action games have their fair share of systems that can be broken (hellooooooo Flying Swallow in vanilla NG). Outside of designing them to be incredibly strict in what you're able to do, I don't think there's anything a designer can do about it in a culture that puts a premium on having multiple options for handling combat situations.

I agree that none of these games are perfectly balanced. My point is that I think it's clear that Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden did a better job of mitigating balance issues than the Souls games or something like Nioh. (For another example of "RPG mechanics" not being a great fit for action games, I'd point to how Symphony of the Night is an absolute mess compared to even the original Castlevania design-wise.)

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

But there was things I personally didn't like about it, like the main character and I couldn't care for MP part.

But Im not kidding when they showed first gameplay trailer the first thing poped in my mind was "the Dragon mechanic would be perfect for Drakengard 4".

They have the engine, it would be a waste not to use it.

The important lesson here is you don't put all your eggs in one basket. How come we rarely hear about Ninja Theory getting into financial trouble?

 

[LotusHD]

then you did a lot better than when i tried to make one, lol

Lol i just stuck to stuff that was amusing, dark, easy to do, was fanservice from the first game, or foreshadowed certain events.

 

[Rymuth]

Do we know what happened here though? Perhaps the game wasn't coming together well, and Microsoft decided to stop throwing money at it. Why should Microsoft keep funding a project they aren't happy with?

So perhaps Platinum almost killed themselves by making a bad game?

Microsoft killed Darkside games by making unreasonable demands and changing the scope of the Phantom Dust Reboot, so it's not unheard of.

Scalebound was never released so you can't say it would have been a bad game.

You're right. We should refrain from making judgments on a game before it gets released.

It's Nier. It'll be lucky to sell over 50,000 copies. I'm not dissing the game. That's reality.

 

[Korezo]

I like PG but all there games are terrible on the first play through, I hate unlocking combat abilites as progression. Hate that on everygame. Not a PG game but I bought Dmc4 special edition a while ago just to play as Virgil but never played again after mission 2 because you can't basically do shit, no fun allowed until end game or new game +. Why action games have to be like this... Same with wonderful 101 game was torture to play until almost the end of the game. All the games are tourture first play through.

 

[pixxxelz]

Really happy to hear this, hopefully this isn't the last game they make together.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

He had a good start with Bayo but beyond that he hasn't done much worth mentioning that's successful.

W101 was a big bomb and Scalebound got cancelled.

So basically the rest of PG have been keeping the company alive for years now.

W101 was a niche game on a niche console. Canning Scalebound wasn't PG's call. How are those the developers' fault?

 

[Cbajd5]

Oh, but now Square Enix will let Platinum make a Dragon Quest game and no one will remember poor Yoko Taro...

Spoiler

This definitely isn't true and I don't know the context of the image, I just wanted to post it.

 

[Alebelly]

The important lesson here is you don't put all your eggs in one basket. How come we rarely hear about Ninja Theory getting into financial trouble?

They've been borderline out of the game since Enslaved bombed. You don't intentionally scale down after Capcom gives you DMC and decide to make a 12 person indie game.

The thing is, they never sold out to EA like so many other dickheads like to do.

 

[BRSxIgnition]

You're right. We should refrain from making judgments on a game before it gets released.

100% Savage.

 

[Suzushiiro]

They gave him 2 delays. Not saying they didn't do anything wrong but at some point you gotta have something.

Every Platinum release, Kamiya-directed or no, has shipped just fine in a dev cycle 2-3 years long at most. The one game where the publisher had a reputation for micromanaging projects, demanding sweeping changes, and cancelling projects via unreachable milestones spent four years in development and then was canceled.

But yes, clearly Scalebound's cancellation, as well as it not looking particularly good in the footage we saw leading up to said cancellation, was entirely Kamiya's fault.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Oh, but now Square Enix will let Platinum make a Dragon Quest game

that would be so amazing

i feel like dragon quest really needs a reboot

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

Microsoft killed Darkside games by making unreasonable demands and changing the scope of the Phantom Dust Reboot, so it's not unheard of.




You're right. We should refrain from making judgments on a game before it gets released.

The difference is Nier came out and proved me wrong. Did Scalebound come out? Hmmmmmm? Can we talk about Scalebound reviews and sales?

 

[Lord of Ostia]

So Kamiya almost sunk the company with Scalebound. Hopefully he'll do better next time.

I would blame Microsoft for that rather than Kamiya or Platinum. Kamiya finally had the chance to work on his dream game, then Microsoft keeps adding more and more unrealistic demands, like forcing the game to be multiplayer despite it being conceived as a singleplayer RPG, then pulling the plug when their unreasonable demands couldn't be met. I mean, maybe they were in over their heads, but it's hard to blame Kamiya for that when it's obvious the project didn't start that way. Microsoft is also notorious for this sort of thing, just look at Lionhead.

 

[blakep267]

Every Platinum release, Kamiya-directed or no, has shipped just fine in a dev cycle 2-3 years long at most. The one game where the publisher had a reputation for micromanaging projects, demanding sweeping changes, and cancelling projects via unreachable milestones spent four years in development and then was canceled.

But yes, clearly Scalebound's cancellation, as well as it not looking particularly good in the footage we saw leading up to said cancellation, was entirely Kamiya's fault.

Or you know this was the biggest most ambitious game he's ever made so with that, different issues arise. A co-op open world rpg. You can't compare W101 to Scalebound

 

[hydrophilic attack]

The difference is Nier came out and proved me wrong. Did Scalebound come out? Hmmmmmm? Can we talk about Scalebound reviews and sales?

microsoft is pretty much the only publisher which square enix looks good when compared to

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

I would blame Microsoft for that rather than Kamiya or Platinum. Kamiya finally had the chance to work on his dream game, then Microsoft keeps adding more and more unrealistic demands, like forcing the game to be multiplayer despite it being conceived as a singleplayer RPG, then pulling the plug when their unreasonable demands couldn't be met. I mean, maybe they were in over their heads, but it's hard to blame Kamiya for that when it's obvious the project didn't start that way. Microsoft is also notorious for this sort of thing, just look at Lionhead.

If I'm on the verge of being poor and homeless and I take a contract work from a big company to try and save myself, but I fail to meet the demands of said company so they fire me and now I'm poor and homeless. Is that the companies fault that I bet my entire life on this one job?

microsoft is pretty much the only publisher which square enix looks good when compared to

I don't know what that has to do in relation to my post.

 

[BadWolf]

W101 was a niche game on a niche console. Canning Scalebound wasn't PG's call. How are those the developers' fault?

Not talking about fault, just pointing out that he hasn't had much to do with the company's success for quite a while now.

 

[Suzushiiro]

Or you know this was the biggest most ambitious game he's ever made so with that, different issues arise. A co-op open world rpg. You can't compare W101 to Scalebound

Pretty sure the co-op and open world aspects were forced in by MS midway through development, so if anything those help prove my point.

If I'm on the verge of being poor and homeless and I take a contract work from a big company to try and save myself, but I fail to meet the demands of said company so they fire me and now I'm poor and homeless. Is that the companies fault that I bet my entire life on this one job?

It is if they say your job is to make a thing and then continue to change/expand the scope of what they want that thing to be.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

Or you know this was the biggest most ambitious game he's ever made so with that, different issues arise. A co-op open world rpg. You can't compare W101 to Scalebound

Perhaps, but you also can't ignore Microsoft's track record with third party studios, and studios making single player games rather than multiplayer service games. Darkside is a good example, but for an even better one look at Lionhead. They forced them to make a multiplayer, free-to-play game rather than the single player RPG that the studio was known for...and then killed the studio despite them having a fully-functional and decently popular beta title. Like, Lionhead did everything Microsoft wanted despite knowing it wasn't a good fit, delivered what was promised, and got canned for it. How hard is it to believe the same thing happened with Platinum?

 

[blakep267]

Pretty sure the co-op and open world aspects were forced in by MS midway through development, so if anything those help prove my point.



It is if they say your job is to make a thing and then continue to change/expand the scope of what they want that thing to be.

Do you have receipts for that? As the initial cg trailer alluded to some form of MP as did the official gamescom demo, which had Co-op at the end

Perhaps, but you also can't ignore Microsoft's track record with third party studios, and studios making single player games rather than multiplayer service games. Darkside is a good example, but for an even better one look at Lionhead. They forced them to make a multiplayer, free-to-play game rather than the single player RPG that the studio was known for...and then killed the studio despite them having a fully-functional and decently popular beta title. Like, Lionhead did everything Microsoft wanted despite knowing it wasn't a good fit, delivered what was promised, and got canned for it. How hard is it to believe the same thing happened with Platinum?

You give me those examples and then there are plenty of examples of third party relationships that didn't end in cancelled games or closed studios. Do we ignore the success of Ori, playground, halo wars 2 sunset overdrive(critical not financial), Cuphead which seems to be on track etc. some games work out, others don't

 

[Danjin44]

The difference is Nier came out and proved me wrong. Did Scalebound come out? Hmmmmmm? Can we talk about Scalebound reviews and sales?

With each footage they showed for Nier Automata, people were impressed but with each footage they showed for Scalecound people got more worried. I mean did u see that boss fight for Scalebound they showed for E3? it was terrible.

 

[Extollere]

2B fanart saved a dev studio, is this the first time something like this happened?

So the moral of the story here is... bless the booty?

 

[Hektor]

So the moral of the story here is... bless the booty?

You can never go wrong with that

 

[TRUE ORDER]

Great for them, haven't played the game myself, but I think that it will be pretty good.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

If I'm on the verge of being poor and homeless and I take a contract work from a big company to try and save myself, but I fail to meet the demands of said company so they fire me and now I'm poor and homeless. Is that the companies fault that I bet my entire life on this one job?

I don't know what that has to do in relation to my post.

I mean, if the original contracted game was for a singleplayer RPG, and then later Microsoft expanded the scope of the game beyond that, Platinum aren't really in a position to say "no, we can't do that" and risk losing the project. Microsoft should not be making unrealistic demands of a studio that is in a much more precarious position than them. That's basically like, in line with your analogy, a company hired a homeless man to clean the bathrooms, but after he'd worked there for a bit they expect him to start making sales calls. If you hired the developer for a project, drastically changing the scope of the project while knowing that they aren't in a secure enough position to refuse you is setting them up for failure. And Microsoft has done this to multiple studios.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

I don't know what that has to do in relation to my post.

you said that one of those games came out and the other did not

i was suggesting that one of those games had a publisher that isn't a complete failure and the other didn't

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

With each footage they showed for Nier Automata, people were impressed but with each footage they showed for Scalecound people got more worried. I mean did u see that boss fight for Scalebound they showed for E3? it was terrible.

I'm talking about the final shipped product, or lack thereoff. Besides E3 presentations are almost never a representation of the final product.

 

[sixteen-bit]

I'm glad everything worked out and hope to see PG around for many years to come.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

you said that one of those games came out and the other did not

i was suggesting that one of those games had a publisher that isn't a complete failure and the other didn't

Last I checked Microsoft still ships games on time.

 

[Akainu]

So the moral of the story here is... bless the booty?

It's the one truth of the world.

Glory to asskind.

 

[Hag]

Just keep the automata team and make more godlike games with beautiful music

 

[Labolas]

Happy to hear Nier doing so well that it made Platinum a ton of success

So Scalebound could have killed them? Don't they have that mobile game with Matsuno and that big project with Cygames?

No, but I think they would have been in a way worse shape than they are now in.

 

[kennyamr]

<3 Yoko Taro sama

 

[IdreamofHIME]

Yoko : Thank You Mr Kamiya San!
Kamiya: Blocked!

 

[Lord of Ostia]

Do you have receipts for that? As the initial cg trailer alluded to some form of MP as did the official gamescom demo, which had Co-op at the end


You give me those examples and then there are plenty of examples of third party relationships that didn't end in cancelled games or closed studios. Do we ignore the success of Ori, playground, halo wars 2 sunset overdrive(critical not financial), Cuphead which seems to be on track etc. some games work out, others don't

You can't compare a game like Ori, Cuphead, or even Halo Wars 2 to an open world RPG. That's why I made the Lionhead comparison, as it's the most similar comparison to make. As for Insomniac and Sunset Overdrive, I think it's telling that Insomniac went back to working for Sony immediately after Sunset Overdrive came out. Clearly Microsoft was no longer interested in working with them, despite them delivering a great game. Obviously development on that game went much more smoothly than Scalebound or Fable, but Microsoft's lack of interest in continuing that relationship speaks to their priorities. Basically, if it isn't a multiplayer service game, they are no longer interested unless you are a small title. This shift in focus fits the story devs have told regarding Lionhead's closure and Scalebound' s cancellation.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Last I checked Microsoft still ships games on time.

yes i'm sure microsoft is the best publisher for fans of gantt charts

e: to be fair, if you love cars and guns they make decent games

 

[Sami+]

Yoooo let's go Yoko Taro. &#10084;&#65039; Hope there's more to come!

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

yes i'm sure microsoft is the best publisher for fans of gantt charts

e: to be fair, if you love cars and guns they make decent games

Ok?

 

[TrounceX]

This is great to hear. Automata is the best game I've played in probably a decade. I was constantly shocked at how it kept upping the ante, introducing new mechanics, and keeping me guessing all the way up until the end. Not since the original MGS have I been so shocked at the amount of sheer creativity in a video game. Really, it's just brilliant. I'm struggling to think of another game that does justice to the game medium as much as Automata did. And that soundtrack, oh man... Just a wonderful work of art all around.

There was a statement made by Yoko Taro a while ago that I think summarizes his genius as a director. Something about how he gets bored of video games after 20 minutes because it's the same thing over and over again. As soon as I read that, I thought "oh my god, this guy gets it". Sure enough. Sure enough.

Now, for the love of god, they have to keep this team together.

Platinum
Yoko Taro
Keiichi Okabe (composer)
Akihiko Yoshida (character design)

This is basically a modern day Japanese dream team as far as I'm concerned. Keep it going.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

Last I checked Microsoft still ships games on time.

This statement is meaningless. Microsoft isn't 'shipping games on time' or not because they are the ones setting the timeframe. Anytime Microsoft releases a game it would be 'on time' because they are the publisher, they determine what constitutes 'on time'. By that are you saying they don't have delayed projects? That definitely isn't true, Microsoft has internally delayed projects plenty of times. That's not even bringing up cancelled projects, of which Microsoft has many. To be fair, so does Sony, Square, EA, and any big publisher, but in terms of high-profile and messy cancellations, Microsoft is leading the pack.

 

[Kent]

As for Insomniac and Sunset Overdrive, I think it's telling that Insomniac went back to working for Sony immediately after Sunset Overdrive came out. Clearly Microsoft was no longer interested in working with them, despite them delivering a great game.

I'd like to understand what goes through peoples' heads when they say things like this.

Insomniac is a developer-for-hire with 260 employees. Do you really think that them having a contract signed with a different company to follow their current contract is indicative of a given company no longer interested in working with them? Do you really think that they don't have their next contract signed by the time they start working on a new one?

Not signing a sequel to be immediately started as soon as the current project is finished isn't exactly indicative of anything of the sort. Especially when they probably had a separate contract scheduled to begin at that point already. It takes a substantial amount of money to keep 260 people paid, and to keep the lights on. Realistically-speaking, they probably have contracts signed up through 2020 right now.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

I'd like to understand what goes through peoples' heads when they say things like this.

Insomniac is a developer-for-hire with 260 employees. Do you really think that them having a contract signed with a different company to follow their current contract is indicative of a given company no longer interested in working with them? Do you really think that they don't have their next contract signed by the time they start working on a new one?

Not signing a sequel to be immediately started as soon as the current project is finished isn't exactly indicative of anything of the sort. Especially when they probably had a separate contract scheduled to begin at that point already. It takes a substantial amount of money to keep 260 people paid, and to keep the lights on. Realistically-speaking, they probably have contracts signed up through 2020 right now.

It's not so much that they didn't sign them up for a sequel to Sunset Overdrive immediately as it is that they didn't contract them for any project. It's been years since Sunset Overdrive, and I'm sure Insomniac was available to contract for work at least once or twice during that timeframe between projects. Clearly Microsoft wasn't interested in working with them again.

Just as an example, Microsoft could've published a smaller, low-risk project from Insomniac like Song of the Deep to keep the relationship going between them. But they didn't, Gamestop published that game. There were plenty of opportunities for Microsoft to work with Insomniac after Sunset Overdrive.

 

[Elfforkusu]

This confirms what I suspected. Platinum hadn't had a hit in a while, and with Scalebound imploding before release, they can't have been in a great spot financially.

But I'm guessing between Nier:A and Bayonetta PC, things are probably looking a lot better now

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Ok?

sorry, the cancellation of really upset me

i should probably stop posting

oh and before you say i only got interested in scalebound once it got cancelled

oh and aside from that i frequently get too carried away in delivering teh epic pwnage