Takao Yamane Joins PlatinumGames as Vice President

PlatinumGames signs Nintendo veteran Takao Yamane as the company’s new Vice President. This new addition comes as the company announced a “New Era” for PlatinumGames following the promotion of Atsushi Inaba as the new CEO of the studio.

Atsushi Inaba used to be the Vice President of PlatinumGames, but his promotion as CEO of the company left this position empty. Takao Yamane steps in to fill this role and help Inaba shape the future of PlatinumGames.

Takao Yamane leaves Nintendo for PlatinumGames

Before joining PlatinumGames, Takao Yamane spent most of his career at Nintendo. He was the Vice President of Nintendo France from 1999 to 2007, and then joined Nintendo Europe as Managing Director of Sales Planning and Strategy. He kept this role for over 18 years and joined Nintendo’s headquarters in Japan as the company’s General Manager of the Licensing Department in 2015. Yamane is now turning away from Nintendo to join PlatinumGames, the developer of Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance among several others.

Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya will reveal more about the future of the company tomorrow in an exclusive interview by Famitsu. In an earlier interview conducted when Atsushi Inaba became CEO of PlatinumGames, he shared his ambition to create a large-scale IP but lacked a solid foundation to build upon. He can now count on the experience of his Vice President Takao Yamane to prepare such a large project.

PlatinumGames developed several popular games, such as Star Fox Zero, Nier: Automata, Babylon’s Fall, and the Bayonetta games series. The latest game from PlatinumGames is Bayonetta 3, which is set to release on October 28, 2022. Their upcoming projects also include a mysterious game codenamed Project G.G., a project first announced in 2020 and described as a spiritual follow-up to Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101. The company can rely on its own game engine, named PlatinumEngine, to power these new games. PlatinumGames is expanding its activities and restructuring its team to make sure it can reach its goals.

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