PlatinumGames, the Japanese game development studio founded in 2007, recently entered into a partnership with Chinese giant Tencent in order to receive funding for its next projects.
The company's goal going forward will be to develop original IPs for multiple platforms and publish them, too, whereas in the past they were forced to work on another publisher's IP.
Interestingly, though, according to renowned Microsoft insider Brad Sams, PlatinumGames was evaluated by the big M for acquisition last year.
Pretty sure last year Microsoft was looking to buy them, guess that deal fell apart or they decided to go another direction.
— Brad Sams (@bdsams) January 31, 2020
We know Microsoft is looking for Asian developers to bolster its Xbox Game Studios roster and PlatinumGames would have definitely been a great option (even if a little surprising after the failure of the Scalebound project) for that purpose.
The studio returned to glory with NieR: Automata (published by Square Enix) in 2017 and released another great game last year with Astral Chain on the Nintendo Switch, which we've selected as one of the best action games of the year. Here's Francesco's final summary from the review:
Astral Chain is, without a doubt, one of the best games ever released by Platinum Games and one of the best Nintendo Switch exclusives to date. With its combination of explosive action gameplay, which masterfully blends together mechanics taken from previous games developed by the studio, engaging investigation and exploration mechanics, an enjoyable story and huge amount of content, Astral Chain is a game that no fan of action games should pass on. That's even in spite of some issues here and there, such as the low challenge level and unbalanced evaluation system that makes it too easy to get S+ ranks.
PlatinumGames also worked on Granblue Fantasy: Relink before Cygames moved all development internally in 2019; another current project is Babylon's Fall, another title due to be published by Square Enix. We recently got the first taste of gameplay, with more to come at some point this Summer.
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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