We have some new rumors about goings on behind the scenes at PlatinumGames.
The independent Japanese developer is hot in the news lately. A day after rumors spread that mismanagement of Astral Chain 2 led Nintendo to take the project to another developer, PlatinumGames emerged to be the co-developer of Ninja Gaiden 4 alongside Team Ninja, to be published by Microsoft.
Up until that point, there had been a lot of FUD surrounding the studio, as the word was that every known developer in the company had left. It is in this context that this new rumor on the PlatinumGamesInc subreddit emerges.
Redditor Mindless_Novel_1800 makes it clear that they are also a former employee at the studio, but they were not the same person who shared the Astral Chain 2 rumor. But now, they have their own rumor to share.
The rumor starts in 2017. Nier: Automata is a hit for both PlatinumGames and publisher Square Enix. PlatinumGames is developing Babylon’s Fall as a conventional hack-and-slash co-op title, when Square Enix’s CEO tells the company to turn it into a live service game. While Mindless_Novel_1800 doesn’t name the CEO, based on the timing it would have to be Yosuke Matsuda.
Matsuda took over as President and Representative Director of Square Enix following Yoichi Wada’s retirement. Last 2023, the Board of Directors voted to oust Matsuda, around the same time the company pivoted away from console exclusives.
As Mindless_Novel_1800 claims, Square Enix had millions to fall back on, but PlatinumGames was in a more vulnerable position as an independent studio. So Mindless_Novel_1800 blames his former CEO, Atsushi Inaba, for putting the studio at risk by agreeing to make Babylon’s Fall a live service.
Mindless_Novel_1800 says it was actually Babylon’s Fall that led to mass resignations within PlatinumGames. Many games that the studio had in development at that time got cancelled, including a 3D Castlevania that they were themselves working on.
Inaba angered PlatinumGames employees even further by trying to get the studio to pitch another live service game idea that he would then shop to publishers. No such second live service game got off the ground. Mindless_Novel_1800 claims that PlatinumGames is currently working on a 4th Bayonetta title alongside Ninja Gaiden 4, but he worries that they are still under Inaba’s bad leadership.
We have been hearing a lot of stories off the record that Inaba made a lot of mistakes, including from PlatinumGames’ most famous ex-employee, Hideki Kamiya. But we did want to return to Matsuda as this is a new indicting claim vs. him. Outside of Kamiya’s claims, these rumors remain uncorroborated at large, and may stay that way until the studio itself actually implodes, giving those developers ample reason to speak up.
And while we acknowledge that Mindless_Novel_1800 has a particular ax to grind with Inaba, we definitely have to consider Matsuda’s part in the failure of Babylon’s Fall as well. His tenure as Square Enix CEO lasted the last two console generations. While Matsuda made some smart decisions like rereleasing their classic RPGs, titles like Balan Wonderworld and Forspoken, and the company’s push to Web3 technologies, not limited to NFTs, also came from him.
We can only hope the current management at both Square Enix and PlatinumGames have been sufficiently chastened away from live service, and they see that their future is most secure by sticking to their strengths.
