Poll of the Day > Why does Platinum Games keep running into funding trouble?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't like Platinum Games. I don't like their dismissive, pretentious, "look past the fanservice and try to enjoy the gameplay" excuses. But if I was to focus only on the gameplay, it's technically flawless.

So why are they always so broke that they can't make games? They had to take Bayonetta to Nintendo because no one else would touch it. And now this Wonderful 101 remaster? A remaster. Not a whole new game. Nintendo won't fund it so they have to go to Kickstarter of all places. Doesn't Nintendo own Wonderful 101? Do they not? They wouldn't make a Kickstarter for a new Mario game. Does Nintendo not want a Wonderful 101 remaster? Or is it not their property?

Why is this happening? Are they difficult to work with? Are they expensive to hire?

FrothySolutions posted...

look past the fanservice and try to enjoy the gameplay" excuses

Lol what's that.

But I think you might be right about being shady or hard to work with. Didn't they bait Microsoft with scalbound and couldn't or wouldn't deliver.

dedbus posted...

Lol what's that.

But I think you might be right about being shady or hard to work with. Didn't they bait Microsoft with scalbound and couldn't or wouldn't deliver.

the rumor is they took scalebounds funding and funneled it into nier

because scalebounds footage looked like garbage months from release, while nier looked like nier like a year or two before release

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FrothySolutions posted...

So why are they always so broke that they can't make games?

Because in the modern era, most larger studios have trouble surviving without a massive publisher to help pay the bills (which in turn sacrifices their autonomy).

So you're basically left with the question, is it better for them to have constant funding issues and maybe have to Kickstart the occasional game, or to give up their soul and have most of their games turn into microtransaction-riddled grindfests? Because that seems to be the choice most developers ultimately have to face these days.
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i think his question is more "why are they always so broke even though the game is funded by someone else"

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Because they actually produce a fair amount of crap games you probably haven't heard about and even one flop is pretty hard on a studio of their size. They've made a lot more than bayo and neir:a.

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Nintendo doesn't own it one of the Kickstarter goals was for PS4 and pc but no Xbox cuz fuck making money

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FrothySolutions posted...

I don't like Platinum Games. I don't like their dismissive, pretentious, "look past the fanservice and try to enjoy the gameplay" excuses.

I didn't know Rick Santorum was on game faqs!

Anyway, your prudish contempt aside, you are right that they make games with amazing game play, and I too don't understand why they struggle to continue to exist when they should be a huge success.

They've had very few bad games and a ton of very good games / masterpieces. Apparently Microsoft fucking them over w/ Scalebound was an incredibly devastating financial wound. Not being able to get support for Bayonetta 2 from anywhere but Nintendo will always be mind boggling, though. This was way before Sony went censorship crazy...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Because in the modern era, most larger studios have trouble surviving without a massive publisher to help pay the bills (which in turn sacrifices their autonomy).

So you're basically left with the question, is it better for them to have constant funding issues and maybe have to Kickstart the occasional game, or to give up their soul and have most of their games turn into microtransaction-riddled grindfests? Because that seems to be the choice most developers ultimately have to face these days.

Bulbasaur posted...

i think his question is more "why are they always so broke even though the game is funded by someone else"

I just wanna know why a Wonderful 101 remaster needs a Kickstarter.

JoanOfArcade posted...

Nintendo doesn't own it one of the Kickstarter goals was for PS4 and pc but no Xbox cuz fuck making money

But apparently Nintendo doesn't own it, that's why. I was wondering why they couldn't even make games they didn't own the rights to. That they were just hired to make. But I guess that's not happening.

streamofthesky posted...

I didn't know Rick Santorum was on game faqs!

If they don't want their games to be treated like fanservice games, they shouldn't make fanservice games. It robs other products of similar fanservitude of their right to be called fanservice.

I think they spread themselves too thin, it always seems like they have multiple games being developed at the same time.

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Because they actually produce a fair amount of crap games you probably haven't heard about and even one flop is pretty hard on a studio of their size. They've made a lot more than bayo and neir:a.

https://i.imgur.com/huT1hCF.png

pretty sure everything, besides the star foxes and the tmnt game, are all successful. and even those three were 4 years ago.

also, the remaster of bayonetta and vanquish didn't need to be crowdfunded. why is wonderful 101 the exception

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Game_Grumps posted...

https://i.imgur.com/huT1hCF.png

pretty sure everything, besides the star foxes and the tmnt game, are all successful. and even those three were 4 years ago.

also, the remaster of bayonetta and vanquish didn't need to be crowdfunded. why is wonderful 101 the exception

Because Nintendo wouldn't fund it but gave them permission

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Bulbasaur posted...

the rumor is they took scalebounds funding and funneled it into nier

Rumor based on what. How does that even make any sense, Square Enix paid for Nier, and paid Platinum to make Nier. The likelihood is as a developer and not a publisher on the project, Platinum was paid a fee to make Nier, but didn't see most, if any, of the direct profits from the the game.

I agree Scalebound looked like crap, but I thought it always looked like crap. From the first game play footage the game looked bad.

The official statement sounds pretty reasonable to me, Microsoft wanted Platinum to make changes to the game they disagreed with and Platinum refused to back down, so they just dropped them project.
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Game_Grumps posted...

https://i.imgur.com/huT1hCF.png

pretty sure everything, besides the star foxes and the tmnt game, are all successful. and even those three were 4 years ago.

also, the remaster of bayonetta and vanquish didn't need to be crowdfunded. why is wonderful 101 the exception

Vanquish was a commercial failure with a cult following (and it is pretty damn fun). I don't even know what infinite space is, TMNT games and star fox games and legend of korra and anarchy reigns, and mad world, and transformers devastation were all bad games that sold poorly. That's like half the list. Even the original bayo fell short of the sales they were hoping for. Wonderful 101 also had poor sales.

Neir:A was ONLY possible because of the guy behind it (Yoko Taro) and it was basically the last chance for platinum to avoid bankruptcy. The company has just barely been able to squeak by several times.

The platinum games we generally remember like MGR:R, bayo, and neir:A are the few successes they've had amidst quite a few failures. Games like vanquish and wonderful 101 are great games but they don't sell well.

As to why wonderful 101 has to be kickstarted, it's the companies first self-published title. I'm not sure that really caries too much weight in the modern digital world but thats their excuse.

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christ, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried

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ForteEXE3850 posted...

Rumor based on what. How does that even make any sense, Square Enix paid for Nier, and paid Platinum to make Nier. The likelihood is as a developer and not a publisher on the project, Platinum was paid a fee to make Nier, but didn't see most, if any, of the direct profits from the the game.

I agree Scalebound looked like crap, but I thought it always looked like crap. From the first game play footage the game looked bad.

The official statement sounds pretty reasonable to me, Microsoft wanted Platinum to make changes to the game they disagreed with and Platinum refused to back down, so they just dropped them project.

because platinum did nothing but apologize for it, when based on history, they don't do that.

you also don't just cancel a multiple million dollar investment like that unless something else was happening. given how far in development it was, literally just a few months from it's set release date. literally it was cancelled the same year it was to release.

and no, the reason that Microsoft wanted changes platinum was unwilling to do is also a rumor. Microsoft was pretty hands off about the entire project. scalebounds actually being kamiyas supposed "dream" to make.

yet all the footage shown was incomplete garbage, meanwhile nier was being made at the exact same time and was not plagued by any issues scalebound was, despite supposedly being a game with a far smaller budget.

as an aside, kamiya actually apologized to Microsoft, which, if you know anything about him, is very suspicious.

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The most obvious explanation for kickstarting a W101 remake is that W101 was a niche game on a system that sold very poorly, meaning many, many people haven't played it. Remakes are usually pretty safe bets because the games have an existing fanbase that you can rely on to support them (either by purchasing it or simply by providing some word-of-mouth promotion), but W101's existing fanbase is pretty small. That makes its success or failure a lot less predictable. To that end, kickstarting it helps to offset some of the financial risk associated with producing a remake with such an uncertain future, which is very helpful for smaller studios that are often one major failure away from bankruptcy.

As an aside, I hadn't realized that Platinum did Infinite Space. That was a fun game, if a little unusual.

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VioletMassacre posted...

MadWorld wasnt a bad game, it mostly suffered from being on the Wii.

And the fact they made the entire game black and white (and red for blood). And not even good gray scaled black and white with texture. It was cell shaded, uninspired, can't even tell what the hell is going on because everything blends together black and white.

Plus it didn't help that the gameplay felt like a rip-off of a Suda 51 game (and that we already had a Wii exclusive Suda 51 series at the time with No More Heroes).

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