PlatinumGames' Live Service Title Is Off To A Really Bad Start

I forgot this game even existed.

‘This game which isn’t on Switch isn’t very good’. Bafflingly tenuous link to Nintendo there.

Figured the game was going to be a flop, but I didn't expect it would be this bad. Hopefully it puts Platinum off from continuing to pursue live service projects. I get the feeling that the only way they're going to recover from Babylon's Fall after seemingly struggling enough to indicate they're willing to be acquired after staunchly affirming they wanted to be independent not long ago is either if Bayonetta 3 is a breakout hit like NieR Automata, or if they just let themselves be bought out. Which isn't the most appealing prospect when considering it could very well be Tencent that snaps them up after their prior investment in Platinum...let's hope that it doesn't come to that.

For a studio that's made multiple award-winning games, Platinum sure has a spotty track record. It seems like they can only do their best work with absurdly over the top action games.

The question is, did the shoe really fit? Or was the prospect of recurrent income an overriding factor?

And live service is the direction Platinum Games wants to head down in the future. Another studio ruined by compete and total morons.

Game was dead in water the moment it was Live Service

Pretty funny how Square published a complete dud(BF) and a gem(Triangle Strategy) so close together. Similar story when it comes to Platinum too, on the development side. Bayonetta 3 will surely be a hit as were the previous two games.

Stop making live games as a service. We all know the companies’ tactics to squeeze every cent from gamers. Most of the time we just want to sit and have fun… not being bombarded with season passes, monetary ads and the obvious grinding to buy more and more stuff.

This games advertising? Didnt see one.

Yeah, this game has looked pretty dreadful since the first trailer.

There's a TON of talent at Platinum, clearly, but also a lot of mismanagement.

Their exclusives contracted by Nintendo seem to turn out pretty well, though. They should stick to that, honestly.

@MrHonest which flops? The ones that were in charge of Activision? Yeah, I can blame Activision, not Platinum (you can see the pattern on that one). And this one, we can blame Square Enix, no wonder that Avengers failed because of their decisions… then GotG because if left a bad taste with everyone… and then this one.

The only true flop purely from Platinum is W101 … which is an EXCELLENT game though… but then you could attribute that to releasing exclusively on the WiiU… which was a flop in itself.

Platinum has pedigree and almost everything that comes purely from their studio is top notch.

my uncle works for bayonetta 3

@ogo79 is this a chat bot? It hasn’t quite got its learning right..

Interesting! Maybe this is the reason why it’s take for Bayonetta 3 so long.
Platinum Games Had some QM issues in their development and Nintendo keeping them in check?

Worst time to publish. Been watching videos of it and it looks like a fun game despite the negative press.

"Live Service Games are Bad", more news at 11.

Square Enix launched 2 console exclusives in the same week, this on playstation and Triangle Strategy on Switch. Guess which one is doing better...

They still won't learn anything from this...

Got the game on playstation 5 and its graphics are still as bad as dragons dogma on ps3/360, platinum must of spent next to nothing on making this quick cash grab.

Also I don't understand how this relates as Nintendo news? Nintendo don't own platinum games and only have one exclusive from them, Nintendo have exclusives from square enix as well which means will you also be reporting on forspoken?

They’ve been living off the Wonderful 101 Kickstarter money for the last couple of years so haven’t had to bother putting in any effort to produce a quality product hence this and the Sol Cresta garbage.

@KryptoniteKrunch The issue is that both games have not been brought to market properly. That sits with the publisher, which is Square Enix. Triangle Strategy should have been given a proper game title - I'm sorry but it's true. Pressing on with that title was a bad decision and it will drastically reduce their sales, especially from digital downloads where people scrolling through will, wrongly, assume that this is just another piece of shovelware on the eShop. As for Babylon's Fall, it's had next to no marketing so they must have cut the budget - likely because their forecasting was looking terrible.

I would not be surprised to see some changes in their senior marketing team - Triangle Strategy with its name, chocobo GP with its monetisation, kingdom hearts with the cloud, and babylon's fall. The case is being built...

Justice.

Comment too short.

It feels like this one beloved studio is doing everything in its power too put the small but loyal fan base it has off their games.

If Bayonetta 3 is even slightly disappointing, I'm not sure they'll recover. Not for me, anyway. They should have just focused on making great action games, like they used to, instead of chasing live service dollars and making troll April Fool joke announcements.

It's a 70 bucks game and one of the first things you see on its Steam store page is a 90 bucks MTX package.
So yeah, everyone involved got exactly what they deserve.

One problem - Square Enix upper management. Clearly between the price tag, micro transactions and a few other flops, these guys have not got a clue what makes a good game.

I bought it for my PS5 for $29 yesterday, and I’ve played it for around 2-3 hours so far.

The only genuinely positive things I can say is that the combat system is interesting(you can effectively have 4 different weapons equipped at the same time and use all 4 at the same time for some pretty interesting combos), some of the enemy designs are cool, the art style is unique, the multiplayer appears to work well, and the loot itself seems interesting.

But that’s it. Even the positives are just, as of now, only interesting, not necessarily good. The graphics themselves are very underwhelming, they look like PS3 quality most of the time. It’s the SLOWEST Platinum game I’ve ever played, it doesn’t feel as smooth as it should. The level design is like a PS2-era linear affair. The characters aren’t that interesting(yet), the story isn’t that interesting(yet), and the amount of microtransaction for cosmetics and premium battle passes is nuts for a $60 launch day title.

I’ll keep giving it a shot, because I am a sucker for looter games with co-op, and like I said, there’s potential here, maybe it’ll show itself more as the game goes on. But right now, it’s either a 5/10 or 6/10. It’s just not what I’d expect from a quality studio like Platinum.

Babylon's fall? More like Platinum's fall!

It was to be expected, sadly. The game looks crap!

Can we stop overvaluing PG just because they made a handful of genuinely good games in the past?

Live service games don't work and are always crap. Microtransactions will turn serious players off your game. Putting microtransactions in paid game is a mistake that costs more. Selling out when you have a vision always is a failure.

You'd think game companies would have learned their lesson by now.

I feel like Platinum might be the most overrated developer on the planet honestly. They've certainly made some very good games, but also a ton of bad ones and most of their good games are basically reskins of each other.

Just bring Vanquish to Switch, PG (and SEGA.) Sorted.

Not Nintendo related one bit, but nevermind that. I wonder how many teams they have at platinum games. It seems the director is different for each of their games and they vary from masterpiece to really awful games.

And this is Nintendo related how exactly?

Didn't hear about this game until yesterday.
I could see why it wouldn't do all that well.

NL sure loves to throw shade at Platinum don't they? They have a PlayStation sister website, why is this on here?

Seems like for every one great title they make Platinum Games manage to make a few stinkers along the way.

@Lizuka my vote goes for WayForward

@Specter_of-the_OLED Platinum has maybe 3 bad games out of a total of like 17 releases. So really it's the opposite.

The game looked bad since its reveal (I thought it was a mobile game initially). People reviewing it were complaining on twitter that it is so bad they have to force themselves to play it.

To top it all up, they are selling it for 60 quid. Elden Ring is sold for 50.

This game was always going to be dead on arrival.

They’ll learn or they’ll go broke and shut down.

I love PlatinumGames, but like half of their releases suck. Their lack of consistency is worrisome.

@nocdaes I think the reason why it doesn’t is they don’t see it as franchise material or want to be bogged down with feeling they HAVE to make a sequel.

Square Enix's Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.

@Gamer83 Even smart people can be blinded by greed, and I think that's what happened here. Hopefully the massive failure of Babylon's Fall has been a wake-up call for them.

@Yorumi And Destiny 2 pretty much has the market cornered.

If that can discourage them from taking the "Game as a service" path, it's a very good thing.

Keep doing what you do best, immersive and awesome single player games!

I played the demo for Babylon's Fall and it should probably be F2P, or like a $30 game, or a single player game. The game's graphics are dated, the level design/progression is dire and the art style is not particularly catching thanks to the palette choices. The combat is decent enough but not so different from other Platinum titles to really grab you, at least in my little taster.

I think there's an okay-to-good game in there. But it has no marketing, costs $60, is not eye catching and is coming out in a brutal stretch of major releases.

Serves them right, the game looks absolutely rancid. They should have stayed in their lane. Other than Bayonetta 3 which will come out this year, they haven't released anything good in ages.

Cloud game types need to die. This is developers fastest way to make money after money once they released the game. And best part of all you OWN NOTHING-they control your content and what they give you. Think about people-you gave them complete control buying CLOUD.

really really couldn't be less interested in live service games atm

What does this have to do with the Switch? If it was on the Switch I may have tried the game, but it's not, so...

Platinum is weird… this experiment with live service, the kickstarter which wasn’t really a kickstarter… the delays… the release of a sequel toan old shmup, but making it merely mediocre…. I would like to be a fly on the wall at their meetings….drunken with saké in the karaoke bar…

Platinum sold out when Tencent got involved and well here we are. I'm excited for Bayo 3 because its Bayo 3 but with a so so gameplay reveal and its long dev time 8 do fear it will be the weakest entry. Its sad to see Platinum end up like this as they used to be my fav devs.

@Indielink Name their other 2 bad games. Note that I said stinkers, not bad games. Stinkers may apply to games they over hype but end up being disappointing such example is the Wonderful 101 port which was over hype as a remastered but end up being a disappointment compare to the Wii U original.

So any chance Platinum might reverse course on their "We're only doing live service games moving forward" deal?

I played the demo, it should have a lot less players.

The only real surprise is how quickly and badly this flopped. I knew this title wasn't going anywhere as soon as they coupled a full-price buy-in with "live service". Only big hits like Final Fantasy and Destiny can get away with that. What I didn't expect was for it to flame out right at the starting line.

@Narrator1 I suspect that live services are kind of like smart phone manufacturers. Once the early ones are established with content and a huge number of users, it's VERY hard for anyone else to break in.

@InJeffable
Hopefully, but many of these companies don't seem to get the message in time, unfortunately.

@MrHonest I agree. I feel like they receive too much praise when more than half of their games were flops, poorly marketed, or mediocre.

The only games they've made that were a success were Nier Automata, Bayonetta 1/2, and Metal Gear Rising. Everything else is barely known about and pretty obscure. Most gamers don't even know about Wonderful 101 or Astral Chain despite having fans. All of Platinums licensed games like TMNT and Korra are also really bad too.

This year is still a long way to go, but if this turns out to be the worst game of 2022, then that's gonna be another huge kick in the nuts for Square Enix. first The Quiet Man, then Left Alive, then Balan Wonderworld and now potentially this game.

@IronDaughter TWEWY2 was also a bomb.

Platinum Games has been ill for a while. Failures are starting to pile up and their bizarre public relations don't do a lot to help them.

They seem desperately cash starved and attempt to market it as everything but.

They are selling a F2P game for 70 bucks even on PC.
It's bloated with overpriced in game DLC on top.

Their greed is the main reason it flopped.
Just read the Steam user user reviews.

They are charging 70 bucks for a game that should have been free as it's designed as a free game.

@Narrator1 Platinum is charging 70 bucks for this F2P designed game. That's why it bombed hard.
You just can't charge 70 bucks for a game that's designed like a phone game.

You can tell when a platinum game is made with passion and when its made to collect a paycheck.

OT: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire has been cancelled on Switch

@Ventilator
Square Enix are charging $70 for a F2P game, not Platinum. Platinum only developed the game under SE direction.

Its crazy to me that people are blaming the developer when Square Enix has consistently made terrible decisions and forced out terrible games nowhere near ready for more than a decade now. The problem is, and will continue to be, upper management at SE who have no idea what they are doing.

Hadn't even heard of this game until this article, lol.

I was planning on buying Sol Cresta until they offered Day One DLC, turning the complete package of the game into a $50 purchase. Can't think of any reason why a publisher would need to release Day One DLC, especially for a shmup, unless the game is free to play and Day One has a long history of being a red flag for a game. No thanks, waiting for a nice sale on that one... maybe.

It's been a long time since I even had any hype for this. It was announced and then sort of vanished into obscurity. Finding out it was it was live service only put my interest in the negative.

And to think live service is the route Platinum Games wants to go. How many failures do there need to be before companies learn? it's like the FPS craze of the 360/PS3 era. Everyone tried to cash in on the COD madness but most FPS games from that gen were actually financial failures due to oversaturation and lack of creativity.

Good. The worse platinum does, the more likely they'll be looking for a buyer soon. And hopefully Nintendo scoops them up.

@MrHonest I don't know if I'd go that far. Sure they have released things like Wonderful 101, Transformers and now Babylon's Fall, but they have also released amazing series like Bayonetta, Astral Chain and NieR

@HamatoYoshi Whatever happened to the Wonderful 101 DLC we were promised as part of that kickstarter?

@Bizzyb it never materialised. I was led to believe the Kickstarter money was specifically for the DLC as game was ready to go beforehand. I’m guessing the Kickstarter was just a wages top-up for Platinum.

@locky-mavo Okay. Kind of like Sony and Hello Games.

"No Man's Sky" on release were a typical 20$ Indie as it were barebone, but Sony demanded them to charge 60$ for the unfinished game.
Sure they had many huge upgrades for free in NMS, but it shouldn't take 5-6 years after release to make a game complete.

Anyways. Square Enix always complains about their game sales, and i guess Babylon's Fall will hit them harder than ever because of their extreme greed. I'm glad people voted with their wallets.
Bayonetta 3 is probably their next hit game, but Platinum is starting to get a list of games that flopped last 10 years.

I wouldn't buy a Platinum game on day one anymore as they can't be trusted, but i will do an exception for Bayonetta 3.
I need to know if it's a paywall game first.

The concept had a few great successes, and the industry saw only that. But the problem is, such a market is rapidly saturated. Some people buy into one long lasting game and pay a lot for it, aided by the fact that there is a lot of people trying it for free, but the people that pay and stay, are probably not looking for many other games like it. The people that don't aren't either.

@ogo79 Lol

If a game is filled with paid gambling mechanics or paid currencies, I will buy it for retail price. Make it freemium or make it quality. It can't be both

@jcboyer515
I'm still waiting for their reviews on the new Horizon and Forza games.

@nessisonett I've noticed this practice happening in many of their articles.

"In the lead-up to the Switch-exclusive Bayonetta 3, fans have been keeping a close eye on its developer PlatinumGames."

I've been keeping my eyes open for Bayonetta 3. Not ALL PlatinumGames other titles for other systems. Also, I own a PS5 as well and forgot (or didn't care) about this title. What does this title have anything to do with Bayonetta 3?