Hello – PlatinumGames president and CEO Kenichi Sato here to introduce something new! Starting today, I’ll occasionally drop by the PG Blog to personally fill you in on the goings-on at PlatinumGames. And what better way to start than by laying out where PlatinumGames goes from here? Along the way, I’ll go into a bit more detail about the capital alliance we recently formed with Tencent Holdings, too.

PlatinumGames was founded in February 2006. That’s over fourteen years of working hard to make games that meet and exceed the expectations of all our fans.

Whether your company is brand new, or going into its fifteenth year, it’s always important to draw out a clear picture of your path forward. This is tricky, because it means balancing what you want to do with what you can do. You can’t let yourself get carried away into fantasy, of course. But if you’re too rational and realistic, you’ll end up selling yourself short. You have to lay out a vision for the near future that’s just practical enough, without getting distracted by things that’re too far down the line to imagine.

So, what does the near future look like for PlatinumGames? Believe me, we’ve had no shortage of spirited discussion about that over the past few years. Our mission is to keep making high-quality games that exceed your expectations as gamers. Our ultimate ambition? Becoming the number one game studio in the world for gamer satisfaction. Naturally, that’s been our goal since the very beginning. The question is, how can we get there?

Up until now, all of our work has been contracted with various publishers. We decided as a company that the next big step on our journey to the top is to start creating and publishing games all on our own. With that in mind, it was time to get real and figure out the specific things we could do to make that happen. We decided that what we needed was a partner to give us a boost.

Which brings me to our recently-announced capital alliance with Tencent. I’d like to go into a bit more detail about that now.

First of all, let me assure you that this partnership won’t place any restrictions on our development style or the kinds of titles that we create. There are several different forms that a capital alliance can take, but any alliance that would cost us our autonomy as a studio would defeat the whole purpose of our mission.

So what do we get out of the capital alliance, exactly? It’s given us a stronger foundation and let us move concretely towards the following goals:

• Creating a new title with a 100% PlatinumGames-owned IP
• Publishing games on our own
• Expanding our development power through PlatinumGames Tokyo

PlatinumGames is one of few studios in Japan that specializes in developing high-end console games for the global market. Making games for top-of-the-line hardware takes a great deal of money, and so up until now we’ve only played the role of developer, partnering up with publishers who finance and sell the games we make. Going forward, we will continue to work with outside publishers, but we’ll also develop and publish titles entirely on our own. We’ve announced the first Platinum IP already with Project G.G., and there are more to come in the future!

Growing stronger as a developer is another major goal of ours. Since 2006, we’ve been entirely focused on Osaka as a hub for development. Our bustling Osaka office is currently home to 200 great game creators! But we want to welcome even more creators into the fold by drawing on the power of Tokyo, too. Our capital alliance provided the perfect opportunity. With the establishment of PlatinumGames Tokyo, we’re perfectly poised to make use of the finest game creators in both western and eastern Japan.

I’d like to close out this blog by explaining why we chose Tencent as our partner. One major reason is something I touched on earlier: They respect our autonomy as game creators. In addition, Tencent values our technical and design abilities very highly, and believes our original IPs have potential in the Chinese and smartphone markets in which they specialize. In other words, it’s a win-win situation!

With all that in mind, PlatinumGames’ fifteenth year is shaping up to be one of big changes. We’re determined to use those changes as opportunities to lift ourselves up to the next level.

This definitely isn’t the last you’ll be hearing about anything I’ve mentioned today! But for now, I hope that I’ve helped give you a realistic picture of what all the recent news really means for PlatinumGames.

In closing, PlatinumGames will continue to endeavor to spread smiles and surprises all over the world with our games. Please look forward to what we’ve got coming next!

Kenichi Sato President and CEO Kenichi Sato was born in Tokyo in 1962. Though he began working for Isetan Department Stores in 1986, he changed careers to work in the video games industry in 1996 when he joined Sega Enterprises (now Sega Games) as a member of the Dreamcast marketing team. In 2000 he was brought on board as a founding member and general manager at Cavia (now Marvelous). In 2006, Sato founded ODD Ltd., the company that would later become PlatinumGames. A key member of PlatinumGames from the very beginning, Sato stepped into the role of president and CEO in April 2016.