PlatinumGames Inc.

Beginnings as ODD Ltd

The company was founded as ODD Ltd by Tatsuya Minami, a veteran Capcom game designer and producer, in Osaka, Japan in February 2006. It was renamed ODD Inc. in July 2007. Minami had left Capcom after growing tired of working on sequels. He told Polygon: "I started to feel more and more frustrated. My biggest personal motivation for leaving was I realized that if I started my own company and brought in a whole bunch of new people, we'd be able to make original and new things."

Capcom connection

PlatinumGames' founders were former employees of Japanese game developer Capcom, and specifically members of Capcom's internal team Clover Studios. Capcom planned to close Clover Studios after two of its games released in 2006, Okami and God Hand, failed to sell well. This led three members of Clover - Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, and Shinji Mikami - to leave Capcom and form a new company, SEEDS Inc. In October 2007, SEEDS Inc. merged with Tatsuya Minami's ODD Ltd. ODD Ltd was renamed as PlatinumGames, Inc.

Hideki Kamiya departure

Hideki Kamiya, a founder of the company and director of key titles including Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101, left PlatinumGames in 2023. Eurogamer reported that this was due to an issue of "trust." Kamiya: "I decided to leave because I felt that the direction the company was heading in was different from my beliefs as a developer. Without that element of trust, I couldn't continue working there, and so I left, so that I could continue working in what I consider to be the right way."

Development studios

PlatinumGames had offices in three Japanese cities in 2024.

• Osaka head office: The company's headquarters have been located in Osaka since it was founded.
• Tokyo studio: Platinum announced its second studio, which would focus on live service games, in February 2020. "Our new Tokyo office will play a major role as we expand into live ops game development," said studio head Atsushi Inaba.
• Fukuoka office: The company's third location opened in 2022. Hideki Kamiya told IGN at the time: "We need more development staff... Fukuoka is gaining notice as a place for game development."

Self-publishing and Tencent investment

In January 2020, PlatinumGames announced it had received investment of an undisclosed sum from the Chinese technology company Tencent. The investment would fund a move into game publishing, according to Platinum CEO Kenichi Sato. "This partnership has no effect on the independence of our company, and we will continue operations under our current corporate structure," said Sato in a statement. “We hope to use this capital to strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing." Studio head Atsushi Inaba told Video Games Chronicle in 2019 that the company was seeking to own its intellectual property and gain more control over its output.

Shinji Mikami departure

Company co-founder Shinji Mikami left the company shortly after directing third-person shooter Vanquish (2010) to start a new development company, Tango Gameworks.

Third-person action focus

PlatinumGames is regarded as a specialist in third-person action games. Nine of the company's first ten games were action titles, including MadWorld, Bayonetta, and Vanquish. Only the space RPG Infinite Space did not fit this category, a Eurogamer retrospective noted.

Kickstarter campaign

On 3rd February 2020, PlatinumGames crowdfunded the release of a remastered version of The Wonderful 101 for modern platforms through a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign reached its initial goal of US$50,000 (funding the release of a Nintendo Switch version), plus a stretch goal of $250,000 to fund a PC version, an hour after it launched. The final tally exceeded $2 million.

Work with major publishers

PlatinumGames has partnered with a number of large gaming companies to publish its own original titles, as well as to provide development for those companies' own projects.

• SEGA: PlatinumGames agreed a four-game publishing deal with SEGA in 2008. SEGA's US president Simon Jeffery called the deal "the most exciting partnership in the game business in the last two or three years... These guys are some of the most talented, some of the most respected guys in the game business." The four games published by SEGA were MadWorld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta, and Vanquish. SEGA also published the brawler Anarchy Reigns.
• Konami: Platinum took over development of Metal Gear Solid spin-off Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance from Kojima Productions in 2011. Series creator Hideo Kojima explained: "Saying, 'If it's a spinoff can it be done?', I entrusted the old Rising to the young staff [at Platinum]."
• Nintendo: The company partnered with Nintendo on The Wonderful 101, which was originally a Wii U exclusive; Star Fox Zero and Star Fox Guard, for which Platinum provided development support; several Bayonetta sequels; and the Nintendo Switch exclusive Astral Chain.
• Activision: Platinum developed several games based on animated TV series for Activision including Transformers: Devastation, The Legend of Korra, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan.
• Microsoft: Platinum entered into a failed partnership with Microsoft to create the dragon-riding action game Scalebound for Xbox One. The game was cancelled in 2017.
• Square Enix: Platinum provided development for Square Enix-published action RPG titles including Nier: Automata (2017) and Babylon's Fall (2022).