It does seem like that's changed a bit since then? After Bayonetta 2, we had the Legend of Korra game (albeit licensed) along with now Scalebound? I also thought Platinum might be working on something else, but I forget.
My feeling here is that Platinum has seen more work opportunities as the types of games they're willing to work on have broadened.
When they started with Sega they were a premium player who made a series of new IPs exactly how they wanted to in a long term sweetheart deal with a publisher.
After that they picked up a half dead project from Konami quickly made something that fit with the biggest elements of the very loose design spec they had created on a short turnaround window. This was also by far their most successful game, and likely their only notably profitable one, so this was a boost for them and the one relationship that seems like it has a good chance of continuing.
Nintendo was looking for more core oriented software and they had Kamiya helm a game that seemed to more immediately fit with what you would think of as a game from Nintendo. Since Sega canned Bayonetta 2 not too long after, while trying to revive the project Platinum eventually showed up and asked if they wanted to pick it up. Given that Nintendo saw they could have a half done game for cheap that fit with what they thought was going to be a core friendly system, they went for it.
Activision explained that the reason Platinum made Korra was that the Activision producer who was in charge of making the game saw them on the list of available developers and went "Yeah, get them!" However, when you sign up for the Activision licensed game developer list, it's usually an option of last resort. It means you're stating to Activision that you're willing to make a 6-6.5/10 at best licensed game with almost no budget on a short time scale. You don't do this if you don't really need work.
Then they signed up with Microsoft who was hungry for development partners when they noticed they had an insufficient first party and were no longer in a dominating situation. However, in this scenario, Platinum has their star director helming a game
that's meant to appeal to a broader audience, uses
an engine that Microsoft is very comfortable with supporting, and
they're trying to use a Western friendly milestone based development plan since this is what Western publishers are far more comfortable with. They're willing to be quite pliable to Microsoft's needs in order to make this work.
What Platinum really has going for it is that they ship games that are usually of good quality that appear to frequently be on time and on budget. Their failures are failures of product (games that don't appeal to a wide enough audience), not failures of process (large scale development issues that impact budget, release window, or notably sink quality). Since they're following that up by making products that are more attractive to their publishers, they're able to keep getting work since their publishers believe that a product that fits with their vision might actually work.
This is actually an angle where I could see them working with Nintendo again, but if they do, I suspect they wouldn't make The Wonderful 102 or Bayonetta 3, but rather something lower budget and likely using a Nintendo IP. I don't think they'd necessarily make Star Fox in this scenario, but that line of thinking is more along the lines of what I'd expect: a game with less money on the line with a more accessible game design and brand to help it sell better.
This is actually how Ninja Theory manages to keep existing as well. They even had a AAA project going with another publisher until they decided that the project had shifted so far into the court of what the publisher wanted instead of what the studio wanted that they weren't interested in making it anymore, and they shifted to doing a bunch of contract work with 90% of their studio that fit their interests better while using the surplus funds from that to have the other 10% make a self published digital title.
Hmmm, this is actually a big question to me then for Nintendo. Why don't Nintendo tries to like help some troubled developer like buying some of their shares or invest a bit on those companies to make them develop for the console exclusively?Like Imageepoch or the previous Tri-Ace? After all, we see how Nintendo themselves being unable to support both Wii U and 3DS by themselves, won't getting some other company to act as both support team(Imageepoch supporting Yoshi New Island) and developer (Monolith Soft main team) is a great idea?
Or maybe that move is simply to expensive to take?
This makes me curious in what made Nintendo pick-up a studio like Monolith Soft the way that it did? I know they haven't picked up NLG in any official capacity but they are effectively a Nintendo studio now in their development, they feel like a mini-Retro, and I am sure get funded by Nintendo for their projects rather than self-fund.
It seems that, while not aggressive or huge, Nintendo has been doing some "pick ups" here and there in different capacities. Has this been spurred on (along with picking up half-finished projects like Bayo and DThird) by an attempt to expand their controlled output as well as portfolio for output in terms of genres and game types that the likes of EAD does work on or that Retro, alone, doesn't have time to develop.
@casiopao, I think this ultimately comes down to the concept that simply having staff is not useful unless that staff is making something that actually appeals to people.
ImageEpoch and tri-Ace don't really have a lot of recent success they can point to where they can say "Hey we're worth spending a fair amount of money on in order to secure our quality output for your system."
By comparison, as Vena mentions in the next post, Nintendo has ended up with a long term publishing agreement with Next Level Games, and the way that evolved was that NLG delivered quality games with each series they were given, and after each one, was given a more prestigious series to work with. That's the kind of natural relationship publishers really like to build instead of just buying a studio and hoping it works out.
For example, when Sega bought Atlus, they had actually been their distributor and been helping them handle licensed goods and merchandizing for a few years, so the relationship was already halfway in place and this was a natural next step when it came up.
For Nintendo specifically, I think they're overwhelmingly focused on these slow building relationships where they feel progressively more comfortable and more ambitious with the partnership. When Hyrule Warriors got announced, a lot of people were really surprised, but if we step back for a bit, Nintendo had a progressively increasing relationship with Tecmo Koei over the years that helped lead to this. Similarly, they have good ties with Namco Bandai that are resulting in notable partnership games on a larger scale. Studios that are only coming to them as a harbor of last resort are a much harder scenario to work with unless they're really confident in that studio's output.
