Although the Japanese studio has recently shown signs of life (Ninja Gaiden 4 is not only the work of Team Ninja), the situation doesn’t seem to be that bright.

On Reddit, a friend of an ex-developer reported what’s going on at PlatinumGames. He’s not the same ex-developer who leaked about the Astral Chain sequel, but he thinks it’s a pretty unfair, or downright evil situation at the Japanese studio. After the release of NieR: AutomatA in 2017, PlatinumGames was financially comfortable, and Babylon’s Fall began to take shape around that time as a character-centric action hack’n’slash with some cooperative elements.

It was then that the then CEO of Square Enix had the brilliant idea to change the concept, and the game that was released and failed was born. This change cost Square Enix and PlatinumGames a lot of money. The difference was that Square could easily afford to lose a few million, but Platinum did not have that luxury. Atsushi Inaba, the CEO of PlatinumGames, agreed to this because it coincided with his new vision, so as the head of Platinum, he is to blame for the failure and its consequences.

The failure of Babylon’s Fall not only damaged the company financially, but also caused many people to leave the company morally, just because Platinum’s name was tarnished. The ex-developer didn’t want to name names, but what he did say was that a lot of people got angry with Inaba and quit, causing some games in development to be canceled. One of those projects was a 3D action game under the Castlevania license that Konami greenlit in 2019, but never saw the light of day due to the pandemic and the internal state of PlatinumGames.

What was Inaba’s plan to save himself? A live service game! Inaba asked everyone who wasn’t working on Bayonetta 3 at the time to put aside all projects and work on a live service idea to pitch to publishers who might be interested in the studio’s concept. Except the staff did nothing but try to come up with concepts. Eventually, many left. Inaba’s idea never got off the ground, and as a result, projects were literally put on hold for no reason, or were never implemented…

Although all this is official, it is quite shocking (and sad).

Source: Reddit