The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter success is undeniable, and it looks like this will be the first step towards Platinum Games moving into self-publishing.
Speaking to VGC, Platinum’s Studio Head Atsushi Inaba and Designer Hideki Kamiya detailed their plans for Platinum Games’ future. If The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter success continues, they’ll be able to focus on making more projects as an indie endeavor — although they won’t always make use of crowdfunding.
ALSO: The Wonderful 101: Remastered specs revealed by Platinum Games
“Firstly, although PlatinumGames might be perceived as this great, flashy company, the fact is we are just a developer and do not have the ability to self-publish,” Atsushi Inaba stated in the interview with VGC. “The other reason is that we really want to gauge how popular this game really is. In terms of the stretch goals and how much funding we get, we are able to gauge the public’s opinion of the game. While we do feel very confident in the game, we’re interested to see exactly how far it can go.”
One might wonder about the need for a Kickstarter campaign considering the recent investment from Tencent into Platinum Games. However, Inaba-san says that these additional resources don’t mean that they can “suddenly do everything we’ve always wanted to do.”
The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter success — currently at $1.3 million, well over its $49,555 goal — shows that people definitely want a remastered version of the game. However, this campaign does not signal an exclusive move to crowdfunding for the company. They consider The Wonderful 101 a “very unique case”, although that doesn’t mean that they won’t use Kickstarter again.
“Moving forward it’s going to be case-by-case, depending on the reaction to this project,” Inaba said. “There are situations where we might be collaborating as well, which is out of our hands. But we definitely do want to move towards self-publishing in the future.”
Also worth mentioning is the special situation of the game’s IP. The Kickstarter was done with the blessing of Nintendo, a company that essentially owns half of The Wonderful 101. They also happen to have worked with Nintendo on the Switch-exclusive Astral Chain. Will we see a similar multiplatform release for that game?
“In the case of Astral Chain, it’s an IP that’s owned half by Platinum and half by Nintendo,” Atsushi Inaba explained. “So right now it just came out and it’s too early to say. For the time being we’re just hoping that it’s a success for the Nintendo Switch and we’ll see how it goes from there.”
“Ultimately it’s Nintendo’s call, not ours,” he added. “They own the publishing rights to Astral Chain so really we have no say in that matter. We consider The Wonderful 101 an exclusive case.”
You can read more about Platinum Games’ future in their interview with VGC.
