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MTZehvor on 23 June 2016
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GOWTLOZ said:
MTZehvor said:

Yes, it does. In fact, it's the ONLY thing that matters, because, as you'll recall, my original quote was:

"They're the only developer on the market that consistently makes good hack and slash titles..."

The word is consistently. You have to be consistently releasing games in a genre to qualify. Santa Monica has released ONE game that could be qualified as a hack and slash in the last five years. Ninja Theory has ONE in the last nine. Platinum has FOUR in the past three years alone, three of which have a higher than 80 on Metacritic. And, incidentially, my point in bringing in Metacritic scores is not to show that they produce better or worse games than either Santa Monica or Ninja Theory; it's simply to show that they are consistently releasing good hack and slash games. Even if some of their releases are failures, you can count on there being a highly rated Platinum hack and slash game released in any given three year period since the release of the original Devil May Cry. You cannot say the same for either SM or NT.

Your argument would apply if we were debating who the better developer is, but we're not. We're simply talking about who consistently releases good hack and slash games, and if neither of your two counter examples even qualify for the "consistently" part, then it's pretty much a moot point from there.

By the way, as a side note, you left out Bayonetta 2 from your overall list, as well as all of Platinum's highly rated titles before they split up with Capcom (Okami, Viewitful Joe 1 & 2, Devil May Cry, etc.). It's not a particularly relevant detail to this debate, but if you're going to cite the entire scope of scores for a developer, it would be worth making sure you get, well, all of their scores.

Quality matters more to me, and when you say consistently release good hack and slash games, it has to be consistent, not three out of four in the last three years. That's inconsistency.

Okami was developed by Clover Studio. Viewtiful Joe was developed by Team Viewtiful. Neither are Platinum games.

Bayonetta 2 was a big oversight on my part, I agree to that. But still the general level of quality of their games is well below the other developers.

I do however agree that Ninja Theory has made a very small amount of games, but they will release Hellblade this year, so let's see how it is.

If quality matters more to you, that's fine. I'm not trying to convince you that Platinum is better than either SM or NT. What I'm simply saying is that Platinum is the only developer that consistently develops good hack and slash games, and when your two counter examples have barely been involved in the genre at all over the past half decade, it doesn't really hold up to the point I'm making. I'm not concerned with arguing who the better developer is, or which one you should like more.

And no, my statement does not mean that they have to reach some kind of quota for minimum quality of games released. As long as they are consistently releasing good games (as I would argue three good games over a course of a three year period is), then it does not matter how many bad or even terrible games they release. There is a difference between stating that a company releases good games consistently, and that the quality of the games they release is consistent. All I am stating is that Platinum can routinely be relied upon for a good hack and slash game. I'm not arguing that they don't release bad games, and I'm not arguing that every game they release will be good. I'm not even arguing that the majority of the games they release will be good (though I do believe that's the case). I'm simply saying that they are constantly involved in the hack and slash industry, and that they can be counted on to produce good hack and slash games routinely. If you disagree with the underlined, then feel free to debate it. Anything else, and your points are off topic and not related to what I'm saying.

Anyway, a few minor points;

Platinum Studios was Clover Studios. Clover Studios was a second party developer working for Capcom until 2006, when they were disbanded. At that point, basically the entire team went together to form Platinum Studios. And Clover was at least partially responsible for Viewitful Joe's development, if memory serves.