PlatinumGames CEO Atsushi Inaba stated in an interview with VGC that many lessons have been learned by the studio from the failure of Babylon’s Fall, and these lessons will surely be valuable in the future. However, despite fan backlash, it will continue to pursue live service development. Atsushi Inaba stated:
“First, the important thing I want to note is that we’re not able to comment on certain areas of games developed by our partners. And that’s one of the reasons we’re not fond of our current situation that only limits us to game development, to be honest with you… “In terms of any concrete reasons or the process that led to this conclusion of the title, you’d have to go ahead and ask Square Enix about the details, unfortunately.”
“The only thing we can comment here in terms of the closure of Babylon’s Fall service itself is that this unfortunate conclusion might have been something that triggered some disappointment, perhaps even anger, in our fans and players.”
“And any disappointment that we might have caused for our fan base is something we feel extremely sorry about—the fact that we led our dedicated fans that way as a developer. “Providing any sentiment other than enjoyment and fun to players in our creation is something we are not very happy about as a developer.”
“There’s a lot that we learned from this experience, and it’s not changed our future plans or outlook regarding moving forward regarding doing live service games at all. “Live service games are definitely something we do want to do and put our effort into moving forward.”
“There are two pillars, so to speak, that we can look at internally for our development teams, namely, people within the same company. “The first is just the sheer fun of the core game mechanics that you have in the live service game, and secondly, performing the live service itself.”
“I think these two pillars are values that need to be strongly connected internally and need to be treasured, valued, and viewed by the same people, on the same team, at the very same company.”
“Otherwise, if one of these is valued over the other, or if they’re not connected, things usually don’t turn out the way we would have wanted them to. “We want to focus on keeping that connection and that balance between those two pillars moving forward.”
Inaba also alluded to the studio’s arrangements with Square Enix as being among the reasons for Babylon’s fall. However, the details were not stated by him as he’s “not able to comment on certain areas of games developed with our partners.”
He also stated that constantly courting and pleasing publishers wasn’t something that PlatinumGames was content with. He also apologised to its fans for the short span of Babylon’s Fall. Hopefully, the studio will have more success as it expands its self publishing efforts. However, it should be kept in mind that those companies rarely succeed who ignore their core audience in front of rampant monetization.
Bullet point:
- PlatinumGames CEO Atsushi Inaba claimed in an interview with VGC that the company learned many lessons from the failure of Babylon’s Fall.
- These lessons will undoubtedly be useful in the future.
- Despite the outcry from fans, it will continue to seek live service development.
- Inaba also mentioned the studio’s collaboration with Square Enix as one of the causes behind Babylon’s demise.
- However, he did not go into detail since he is “unable to comment on some elements of games made with our partners.”
- He also indicated that PlatinumGames was not satisfied with constantly courting and pleasing publishers.
- He also apologised to the show’s fans for the brief duration of Babylon’s Fall.
