PlatinumGames

PlatinumGames Inc. is a Japanese video game developer that was founded in October 2007 as result of a merger between two companies, Seeds Inc. and Odd Inc. Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba, and Hideki Kamiya founded Seeds Inc. after the closure of Capcom's Clover Studio, while Odd Inc. was founded by Tatsuya Minami. A year after the studio was founded, video game publisher Sega announced that it would be publishing four intellectual properties developed by the company: MadWorld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta, and Vanquish. Their partnership later extended to include Anarchy Reigns. Most of these games were met with positive reception. Over the years, PlatinumGames had developed an expertise in action games and one of their key philosophies was that the team would not follow conventional game design concepts.

While PlatinumGames' core goal was to create new and original intellectual property, the team also accepted several contract works from Activision on several licensed projects, most of which received mediocre reviews. Since 2013, PlatinumGames had held a close relationship with console manufacturer Nintendo, which funded several of their original titles, including The Wonderful 101 and Astral Chain, and handled licensing between Sega that would allow Platinum to continue the Bayonetta series. The studio worked on creating new installments in other studios' franchises, with the studio taking major development duties on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance for Konami, Star Fox Zero for Nintendo, and Nier: Automata for Square Enix. Nier: Automata, which was both a critical and commercial success, was an important project for PlatinumGames, since it was their first game released after the cancellation of Scalebound, a project funded by Microsoft Studios.