PlatinumGames Needs To Give Up Its Live-Service Plans
Remember Babylon’s Fall? Only about 15 people played it, and at least eight of those thought it was total rubbish. PlatinumGames and Square Enix sought to wade in on the live-service market with a character action game without any form of creative vision. It was artistically bereft, mechanically bland, and a mishmash of assets from different games that expected us to invest in a long-term product that meant nothing.
The whole thing was a failure, with the servers set to switch off entirely in February as Platinum wipes its hands of the entire mess and moves on. Except the studio has said it still means to push forward with its live-service plans. I have no idea if this is also with Square Enix or another publisher entirely, but it is already learning all the wrong lessons from Babylon’s Fall in spite of the wreckage still producing a scorching mess of flames. Just quit while you’re behind and do something else.
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It feels like Platinum’s reputation as a peerless developer has diminished in recent years, both due the bloating length of development cycles and outside investments from companies pulling it in so many different directions. The days where it created back-to-back bangers like Bayonetta 2, The Wonderful 101, and Metal Gear Rising are over, even if games like this are still emerging in due time. Bayonetta 3 is one of my most anticipated games this year, but it’s been a long time coming and since its reveal we’ve got a few remasters and not much else. Instead, we got Babylon’s Fall.
From my perspective, and I’ve been around the block enough times to know, it was an achingly obvious attempt to capitalise on a new revenue model without ever once
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