The growing success of The Wonderful 101: Remastered Kickstarter has opened up an avenue for Platinum Games to self-publish, but what about a new Bayonetta game? They’d certainly like to do it, but getting the rights to put out the next Bayonetta game on their own is going to cost a lot more money.
Anime News Network translated a portion of an interview that Platinum Games head Atsushi Inaba did with IGN Japan. In it, the studio head discusses the successes and failures of The Wonderful 101 and what that means for Platinum Games moving forward. Inaba-san also brought up something that might be on people’s minds — the fate of the next Bayonetta game.
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According to Atsushi Inaba, Platinum Games would very much like to get to self-publishing the Bayonetta series of games. (No mention is made of whether or not this includes the first two games that have already been released.)
However, the Bayonetta IP is currently owned jointly by Nintendo and SEGA. Atsushi Inaba notes that Nintendo, in particular, is very protective of their intellectual property, mentioning that this level of protectiveness is completely in line with Kyoto’s 3,000-year-old culture.
If Platinum wanted to put out a new Bayonetta game as a self-publishing endeavor, this would naturally mean that they would have to either license or outright purchase the IP from both SEGA and Nintendo. While Atsushi Inaba doesn’t specifically mention what that might cost, he does essentially say that it would be much more than the $50,000 or so asked for in The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter.
As for why they might want to do it, Inaba-san detailed his thoughts on that as well. While working with a publisher eliminates many of the financial risks of game development, it also does away with many of the benefits if your game happens to be a runaway success.
With The Wonderful 101 doing well on Kickstarter and no signs of Bayonetta 3 since its original announcement in 2017, does this mean that Platinum Games is taking over the franchise? Atsushi Inaba didn’t say for certain either way, but it would certainly be interesting to see.
