Platinum Games has managed to find a niche. When it comes to violent, endearing action games with a sense of style, there’s no better place to look than Tatsuya Minami’s studio. However, when pushing units and profitability are your concern, things become a little bit trickier. Having a loyal fanbase is key, but you can’t take an army of Bayonetta believers to the bank.
Polygon recently had the opportunity to talk to Minami, who’s the main man behind beloved projects like Vanquish and MadWorld. His company, Platinum Games, has been producing some of the most interesting experiences of the current generation, but Minami expressed a bit of concern over the commercial success of his studio’s endeavors.
"Whether we've sold as well as we would have liked, or whether the company has the amount of money that everybody would love to have in the company, I think I'd probably rate it as a C or even a D,” he said.
The original Bayonetta, which released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, has pushed more than a million units since launch. That’s considered the most successful game in the developer’s library (without final numbers for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance), but that just isn’t good enough for this highly passionate group.
"We obviously grew up being part of the domestic Japanese market — a lot of our staff spent time in domestic Japanese publishers, focused really on the domestic Japanese market. And now we're trying to expand and focus more outward and think about gamers worldwide,” Minami said. “But when you think about what global success really means, that means we need to be selling more titles. Our games need to sell more copies."
Bayonetta 2 will be making its way to the Wii U in the near future, along with the upcoming The Wonderful 101. There’s plenty in the pipeline for Platinum, but as always, it’s unknown what will become a “hit.”
