Platinum Games dissatisfied with sales

Platinum Games president Tatsuya Minami has said the biggest challenge for the company has been finding new work of its team.

Speaking to Polygon, Minami admitted that, though he has been pleased with what his team have produced over the last five years, he’s been less satisfied with the Japanese studio’s sales.

“Whether we’ve sold as well as we would have liked, or whether the company has the amount of money that everybody would love to have in the company, I think I’d probably rate it as a C or even a D.

“We obviously grew up being part of the domestic Japanese market — a lot of our staff spent time in domestic Japanese publishers, focused really on the domestic Japanese market. And now we’re trying to expand and focus more outward and think about gamers worldwide. But when you think about what global success really means, that means we need to be selling more titles. Our games need to sell more copies.”

Platinum’s biggest seller by the 2012 was Bayonetta, Minami confirmed, but he wanted it to do better.
“Bayonetta didn’t sell what we wanted it to sell,” Minami says.

“We were hoping it was going to do a little bit better than that, though you can’t put it all on the game itself. I think there were a lot of issues with when it came out, the kind of marketing behind it.”

However, he is more optimistic about sales of its latest product, Metal Gear Rising. Though Minami said it’s too early to tell, sales of the game are looking positive thanks Konami’s marketing push and the strength of the brand.

“We’re expecting Metal Gear Rising to sell better than Bayonetta, and obviously it’s just come out," he says. "But if you look at games developed in certain Western studios, as far as sales go, they’re clearly ahead of us there, and we’re not going to be satisfied until we’re at that level.”