Atsushi Inaba, PlatinumGames’ co-founder, president, and CEO, recently spoke of a potential future for the celebrated action game development studio in an interview with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. He hinted at titles “that are different from the past,” with a focus on larger games and live service systems.
“The projects that we are trying to create for the future will be different in terms of their structure,” Inaba said when asked where he’d like Platinum to go next. “Considering the changes in the market over the next five years or so, I think it is absolutely necessary for us to do this.”
The new CEO largely believes the studio needs to create fewer one-off titles and start pushing more games that “can be enjoyed and loved for a longer period of time.” The assumed testing phase of this new era can be seen with the recently announced live service hack-and-slash title Babylon’s Fall. However, the current state of the game, as seen in its past closed beta play period, along with this planned shift in focus from the highly acclaimed developers, has many fans worried.
I'd take one-off, well designed titles over something like Babylon Fall's which looks poorly designed.
— Stealth (@Stealth40k) February 7, 2022
Despite any worries fans may have, it seems Platinum is moving full-steam ahead in this new direction with Babylon’s Fall and possibly Hideki Kamiya’s next title, dubbed Project G.G.
“Project G.G. is still in the stage of testing various things, so I can’t tell you much about it, but when it comes to future game production, we want to focus on creating games that are different from the past,” Inaba said when asked about the upcoming title. “I would like to focus on creating games that can be enjoyed and loved for a longer period of time.”
While Inaba clarifies that he’d still like the company to dabble in one-offs like the Bayonetta series or Astral Chain, it’s unknown if a new shift in plans could interfere with the quality of those projects.
PlatinumGames isn’t the only company that’s putting an emphasis on live service games. Sony plans to launch 10 live services games of its own by March 2026, a move that’ll be aided by its planned acquisition of Bungie.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.