The Olympics are coming to Japan in 2020 and Japanese game devs like PlatinumGames plan to take full advantage of the spotlight with a plethora of big announcements.
Bayonetta, NieR: Automata and Astral Chain developer PlatinumGames has ambitions plans for 2020. In a recent interview with Inside Games, Platinum CEO Kenichi Sato wants the studio running full steam ahead on new projects.
"This is the year of the Tokyo Olympics. I think the world will focus on Japan. Platinum Games, as Japan's leading game studio, will run at full speed again this year in pursuit of the user's smile so that it can be noticed by users all over the world," Sato said.
So what could PlatinumGames be planning?
Right now the Japanese studio has multiple wholly-owned IPs in development, one of which is a "shapeless, formless new IP." Platinum has also expressed plans to self-publish its own games.
Currently PlatinumGames is an independent developer that makes games for other companies, so they don't own both the publishing and IP rights to the projects they make. This is the case with Bayonetta, which is published by Nintendo, and the studio's most recent game Astral Chain.
PlatinumGames wants to change this gain autonomy and freedom over the games it makes. Basically we should see PlatinumGames morph from a games developer into a developer-publisher, similar to how Bungie transformed after it regained IP rights to the Destiny franchise.
We could see PG not only reveal a new IP, but make a dramatic transformation in how its business operates. It could join the likes of Bandai Namco, SEGA, Square Enix, and Konami and self-publish its own internal titles.