PlatinumGames, the Japanese development studio mainly known for action games like Bayonetta, NieR Automata and Astral Chain, announced today to have entered a partnership with Chinese giant Tencent in order to receive capital investment.
PlatinumGames president and CEO Kenichi Sato said in a brief note:
We would like to announce we have received a capital investment from Tencent Holdings Limited as a basis for partnership. This partnership has no effect on the independence of our company, and we will continue operations under our current corporate structure.
We hope to use this capital to strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing. We also hope that this partnership can give us a wider global perspective, while still creating high-quality games that stay true to our name.
One of the goals seems to be self-publishing, then. So far, PlatinumGames had to rely on publishers such as Sega, Square Enix, Activision, and Nintendo to release its games.
Beyond Bayonetta 3, whose development is going very well according to Hideki Kamiya, the studio is also working on Babylon's Fall, which should be fully unveiled in the Summer. There's more coming from PlatinumGames, though, as in a recent interview both president Sato and studio head Atsushi Inaba have teased 'going all-out' and 'rolling out various announcements, big and small' throughout the year.
For Tencent, this is only the latest in a very long series of investments in other game companies. They already own stakes in companies such as Riot, SuperCell, Grinding Gear Games, Epic Games, Bluehole, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Paradox Interactive, Fatshark, and Sumo Digital.
Additionally, Tencent recently launched the Nintendo Switch in China after a partnership with Nintendo and they are working with NVIDIA to release the START cloud gaming service in China (clearly based on the GeForce NOW architecture).
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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