Japanese action game specialist PlatinumGames has said that it doesn't want to be relying on publishers to make games.
That's according to the studio's founder Hideki Kamiya and head of development Atsushi Inaba who told GamesIndustry.biz that the company wants greater creative independence moving forwards.
"When you have a publisher and they fund the entire game, it comes with strings attached and those strings are that sometimes you can't make a sequel," Inaba said.
"Sometimes it's all up to them. So to really have control over what you've made, you have to fund it and make it yourself. That allows you a lot of freedom, a lot of different options. That's why, if you're a developer of our size, it's why you would want to do more self-publishing and self-funding."
Kamiya added: "Wanting to create our own content and our own IP... Even when I was making the first Bayonetta, there were some frustrations that were occurring between not funding it ourselves and being controlled in certain areas by other companies. We have the confidence and the selfish desire to make something that is ours and control it 100 per cent - we've had that for a long time."
But none of this is to say that the studio isn't open to working with other companies; Platinum is still interested in working on licensed IP, as it has in the past for Activision on Transformers and Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles.
"We're not opposed to doing licensed games at all," Inaba said. "It has to be a licence we like - everyone in the company has one or two licences they think is really cool and would love to work on.
"If that connects, and the opportunity is there, we'd certainly pursue it. Or if there's an opportunity to do something with a licence that evolved it, expanded it, do something that had not been done before - which is often very hard with licences because there are lots of limitations preventing you from doing that - then that would be another creative reason for us to potentially go in that direction."
Platinum has had a rocky few years; after Microsoft cancelled its ambitious Scalebound the company was very nearly on the verge of bankruptcy. That was before Nier Automata, the studio's collaboration with Square Enix and mad man Yoko Taro was a smash hit. Kamiya himself has said the game and its creator saved the developer.
