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PlatinumGames president and CEO has stepped down

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Kenichi Sato had held the position since April 2016, but in a statement on the PlatinumGames website he revealed that he left the role last month.

Atsushi Inaba, who was vice-president of PlatinumGames and the head producer of its development division, has taken on Sato’s old role.

Inaba was previously CEO and producer of Clover Studio, the Capcom studio responsible for Viewtiful Joe, Okami and God Hand.

“At the end of December 2021, I stepped down from my position as president of PlatinumGames, and my successor is Inaba,” Sato explained in a statement.

“After I assumed the position of president in April 2016, we focused on the game development business with the desire to bring smiles to people around the world, and realised a capital alliance with Tencent in December 2019.

“We then launched Platinum Games Tokyo as a development base to further strengthen our development capabilities, and started the development of our own IP, which was our long-cherished wish.

“We now need to accelerate our efforts to create new games that only PlatinumGames can create, and I have decided that the best way to do this is to hand over the presidency to Inaba, who has been the studio head of PlatinumGames for many years and has demonstrated his skills in the creative side of games.”

Sato will now support Platinum in a purely advisory role.
 
Took that china money and ran?

I don’t have as much faith in them anymore i have to say. But still looking forward to bay 3.
 
Most of their games were shitty, not surprising.


Tobey Maguire Lol GIF
 

Bragr

Banned
Platinum has always had a rocky way of things, weak sales, always desperate for finance, they need to ship games quickly and they need some decent sales or the company is bust.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Wow, all the replies here are out so of touch with a heavy case of confirmation bias and have absolutely nothing to do with the dude's statement that doesn't even begin to hint at any troubles whatsoever, lol.

As for their games, they're always pretty great, from Bayonetta, to Automata, to Astral Chain and even some lower end licenced stuff inbetween like Transformers. I'm not hyped for Babylon's Fall but oh well, they have more games they've yet to show that are their own projects to self publish etc.
 
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Lol at the negative wording of the article/thread title. Can we see the positive instead, which is Atsushi Inaba stepping up to the CEO role instead? With Kamiya, that duo made some banger games so I trust PG is in good hands once more as I didn't feel it from the previous CEO anyway
 

Anime-Vix

Member
Maybe Babylon Fall is not going on well.
I think this might be it. The failure of Scalebound and now Babylon fall shows the studio has an issue creating next gen games. Platinum can be hit or miss. In order for them to be a solid studio, They need to be more consistent and improve on actually creating next gen games.
 

ParaSeoul

Member
Platinum's output throughout its existance has been underwhelming honestly. Even their better games have noticeable flaws but they're one of the few still making games like that so they always get a pass.
 

jakinov

Member
Why people here assuming this is a bad thing? CEOs step down allt he time. He could have easily been kicked out because he sucked or left becaus he doesn't want to work anymore. He's not a founder, he's only been CEO for the last 5-6 years, he's in no creative position. His replacement could always do an even better job than him too.
 

Shut0wen

Member

Kenichi Sato had held the position since April 2016, but in a statement on the PlatinumGames website he revealed that he left the role last month.

Atsushi Inaba, who was vice-president of PlatinumGames and the head producer of its development division, has taken on Sato’s old role.

Inaba was previously CEO and producer of Clover Studio, the Capcom studio responsible for Viewtiful Joe, Okami and God Hand.

“At the end of December 2021, I stepped down from my position as president of PlatinumGames, and my successor is Inaba,” Sato explained in a statement.

“After I assumed the position of president in April 2016, we focused on the game development business with the desire to bring smiles to people around the world, and realised a capital alliance with Tencent in December 2019.

“We then launched Platinum Games Tokyo as a development base to further strengthen our development capabilities, and started the development of our own IP, which was our long-cherished wish.

“We now need to accelerate our efforts to create new games that only PlatinumGames can create, and I have decided that the best way to do this is to hand over the presidency to Inaba, who has been the studio head of PlatinumGames for many years and has demonstrated his skills in the creative side of games.”

Sato will now support Platinum in a purely advisory role.
Personally think sato was bad for the company, he joined half way through neirs development so he had 0 impact on it but the only game decent to come iut under him was astrail plain, the new guy whose been announced as ceo hopefully makes afew changes, drops there GAAS way of making games
 

Rickyiez

Member
#freeKamiya

Just kidding, CEO steps down all the time and Inaba had solid track record with Clover. I'm only worry about their recent outputs that stuck in development hell, but their recent games like Astral Chain and Nier Automata are not bad
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Time shows MS made the right decision by axing scalebound. These guys need to get their shit together

Why do people keep saying this? What tremendous successes was MS responsible for around the same time? What's the rationale for arguing that Scalebound was such an outlier case that the developer had to be responsible for it?
 

Fbh

Member
Yeah I wouldn't read too much into this.

With that said, as much as I love some of their games, Platinum is really inconsistent with their releases. Nier Automata was fantastic, Astral Chain was good but not great and Babylon's Fall looks terrible. Hopefully Bayonetta 3 turns out good.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Babylon's Fall looks awful. Platinum had their awful games in the past, mostly licensed stuff like Korra and TMNT. But this is one of their own projects. They remind me a bit of Game Republic. Some gems (like Folklore), but also some stinkers like Knights Contract. And then they faded away.

I was a huge fan of PG during the PS360 years, but since then they are kind of uneven. I think they're mediocre in fact. But their games do have a certain B-tier charm to them and play like classic games. NieR was a huge hit for them but it wasn't entirely their project. Transformers is one of the better PS Plus freebies.

Their overall best game I would say its Vanquish.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Is Metal Gear Rising 2 currently something possible? That's all I would care about this company.

Astral Chain I didn't like, combat wasn't engaging at all to me and the framerate didn't help. Also that Babylon's Fall game looks kinda shit.
 

Lognor

Banned
You should be happy if that game hits 80 on meta. New director and hellish dev cycle, not gonna end well.
Yep. That and Babylon's Fall looks awful. What happened at Platinum?

Their last two games I really enjoyed - Nier Automata and Astral Chain. Now we're getting crap like Babylon's Fall. What is going on?
 
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