Platinum Games Talk Current Business Challenges And The Future

US video game site US Gamer has conducted an extensive interview with the producer of Platinum Games, Atsushi Inaba. During the interview Inaba talked about their business challenges, the various IPs they are currently working on and also about owning their own IPs. Here’s a rather handy bulletpoint summary from NeoGAF user Nirolak.

• Inaba notes that they’re currently working on licensed games like The Legend of Korra because they need to, but in the long-term they want to be independent.
• “The company doesn’t really have a future unless we develop our own original IPs.”
• Platinum currently owns none of the IPs they’ve worked on, including Scalebound, despite being partnered with Microsoft, who often lets developers keep their IPs.
• Inaba implies that Platinum would like to develop and self publish their own IPs at some point. Obviously you need money to do that though. I put the full quote below.
• “Because we don’t have our own original IP, we don’t have the chance to develop it, publish it. We’re not used to the cycle of making one,” Inaba says. “We’re trying to get used to the cycle of making sequels.”
• When asked if he considers Platinum to be part of the Japanese indie scene, Inaba replies: “Platinum is becoming bigger, so we’re kind of in a limbo. But I feel like Platinum is part of that community.”
• “When we first started, we had a lot more freedom to create what we wanted, but now we’re working more with the community, listening to what they have to say, and keeping open those lines of communication.”
• “Of course we want games that sell five or six million copies, but once you start focusing on sales, we lose some of that freedom. So right now we’re focused on both.”
• Inaba gave a non-answer when asked if they were making any original IPs that they own.
• Inaba didn’t seem to provide any answers about how they intend to ever actually fund a self owned IP, much less self publish it.

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