There are plenty of “shifts” going on in the video game industry currently. And one of them has to do with several people from various companies deciding to leave because they don’t feel that the company is what it used to be. One such person who made that move was Hideki Kamiya in 2023 when he stunningly left PlatinumGames after helping make the studio what it was and not saying for a long time why he left. Then, he opened up his own studio in Clovers, which certain former members of Platinum are helping along. Since that point, many key members of the once-prominent studio seem to have left.
Fast forward to now, and Hideki Kamiya dropped a new YouTube video about certain things, and in it, he had a picture of a “former PlatinumGames directors’ drinking party.” In the picture were him and five other men, who were later confirmed to be Abebe Tinari, Yusuke Miyata, Takahisa Taura, Kenji Saito, and Masaki Yamanaka. All of these men worked on several key titles for PlatinumGames, among other publishing studios. So, if it’s true that they have all left Platinum, that would be a crippling blow, no matter how you looked at it.
The key thing here is that PlatinumGames isn’t really working on anything singular at the moment that would give players hope that things are turning around just fine. They were announced as working on a certain ninja title, but that’s alongside Koei Tecmo and Microsoft. It’s not a game that’s being exclusively worked on by Platinum alone.
This is also concerning given the thoughts that Kamiya eventually gave about his departure from the company. Specifically, he noted that “if I was happy, I wouldn’t have left Platinum,” which implies that there were things going on behind the scenes that got him to leave. The notion has been teased by various reports from anonymous staff members, including some that said those at the top of the company are trying to lean more into live-service games instead of the classic experiences that PlatinumGames is known for. That would hardly be the first ill-fated decision a company has made about live-service titles in the past.
Just as important, it’s hard to know what the company is fully working on right now, as it’s not given any real teases of future projects. Thus, if people keep leaving the studio, things could get rather ugly rather quickly.
