Dear Reader:
You are viewing
a story from GN Version 4.0.
Time may not have been kind to formatting, integrity of links, images, information, etc.
Platinum's president talks leaving Capcom, Kamiya comments, success around the world and more
Coming from a Polygon interview with Platinum's president, Tatsuya Minami...
Why he left Capcom...
"At Capcom I was working on lots of titles, and a lot of those were just things that needed to be done for the company. And in the process of doing that, I started to feel more and more frustrated. My biggest personal motivation for leaving was I realized that if I started my own company and brought in a whole bunch of new people, we'd be able to make original and new things."
On Kamiya's colorful tweets...
"I think Kamiya tweets thinking that I'm not looking at it actively, but I don't think he realizes how much I see. So when he says something that I notice, I do go to his seat and have a stern talking-to with him. Up until this point, everything he's said on Twitter has been on the very close side of the safe line. I've never asked him to delete anything. But he pushes that safe line when he decides to use some of the more foul language that he knows in English."
On becoming more globally successful...
"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.
We have to think a lot about what resonates with consumers globally and find that secret sauce and make sure that goes into our games. And there's a lot of places we need to look for that: it's not just in art, it's also in game design, it's also in music ... I think the one thing that we want more than anything in the immediate future — and it's something we continue to work hard on — is we definitely want people to understand that we're making games here in Japan, but we're making games for everybody."
On Viewtiful Joe's sales...
"When people think back to Viewtiful Joe, a lot of them say, 'That was a very Japanese-focused game,' but Viewtiful Joe sold more copies in America than anywhere else."
Full interview here
Why he left Capcom...
"At Capcom I was working on lots of titles, and a lot of those were just things that needed to be done for the company. And in the process of doing that, I started to feel more and more frustrated. My biggest personal motivation for leaving was I realized that if I started my own company and brought in a whole bunch of new people, we'd be able to make original and new things."
On Kamiya's colorful tweets...
"I think Kamiya tweets thinking that I'm not looking at it actively, but I don't think he realizes how much I see. So when he says something that I notice, I do go to his seat and have a stern talking-to with him. Up until this point, everything he's said on Twitter has been on the very close side of the safe line. I've never asked him to delete anything. But he pushes that safe line when he decides to use some of the more foul language that he knows in English."
On becoming more globally successful...
"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.
We have to think a lot about what resonates with consumers globally and find that secret sauce and make sure that goes into our games. And there's a lot of places we need to look for that: it's not just in art, it's also in game design, it's also in music ... I think the one thing that we want more than anything in the immediate future — and it's something we continue to work hard on — is we definitely want people to understand that we're making games here in Japan, but we're making games for everybody."
On Viewtiful Joe's sales...
"When people think back to Viewtiful Joe, a lot of them say, 'That was a very Japanese-focused game,' but Viewtiful Joe sold more copies in America than anywhere else."