PlatinumGames creative producer talks Bayonetta 2 Wii U exclusivity

During a presentation held at UCF’s Center for Emerging Media last week, PlatinumGames creative producer JP Kellams shared a few words pertaining to Bayonetta 2’s Wii U exclusivity.

Asked about the challenges in moving between publishers and platforms, Kellams said that the game “would not exist without Nintendo white knighting that project.” In the end, Platinum “really wanted to make Bayonetta 2,” and that’s what mattered most.

Without getting into some stuff that is both business and confidential, the simple question I’d like to ask you is, ‘Do you want to play Bayonetta 2?’ Bayonetta 2 would not exist without Nintendo white knighting that project. So while I totally understand that people want to play it on the platforms that they’ve played it on previously, we really wanted to make Bayonetta 2.

And when pressed further – mainly regarding how much Platinum has to oversell, given the new audience and whatnot – Kellams added:

But if you were going to sell a game on a Nintendo platform, what publisher would you choose? Right, Nintendo. Right? So if you’re going to sell a game on a Nintendo platform, the publisher that you want to be with is Nintendo because they know how best to service their audience and they’re going to do the best job of explaining your game to that platform. You very rarely see huge, major third-party successes on Nintendo platforms because it’s really hard to fight against Mario, right? It’s why Universal isn’t as big as Disney. I mean, it’s really hard to fight somebody on that kind of turf, so…

We really wanted to make Bayonetta 2. And Bayonetta 2 is a project that we were passionate about. And when we couldn’t… when the business situation changed and we couldn’t make it the way that we were originally planning on making it, we definitely wanted to make sure that our project survived. I’ve seen Bayonetta 2 – I look at it every single day of my life when I’m in the office. It’s really cool and the world is going to be a better place because Bayonetta 2 is in it.

I spend a lot of time on Twitter seeing people get really angry, ‘Why is it not on PS3 and 360?’ Right? So kind of the way it went was, ‘Why do we have to buy a Wii U for one game? Why isn’t it on PS3 or 360?’ And now that the Xbox One and the PS4 are out, it’s ‘Why isn’t it on PS4 or Xbox One?’ So then it’s not about buying a piece of hardware, it’s just that you didn’t want it on the Wii U.

And that’s cool, I mean maybe that system’s not for you, or maybe that platform isn’t what you want to play games on, but we really want to make Bayonetta 2 and we think it’s going to be a fun game and the people who do play it are going to really enjoy it and I think that we made the right decision to make sure that game survived. I mean I’d rather be in a world with Bayonetta 2 than without.

Thanks to Jake for the tip.