A lot of their games were bombs but they were critically well received and have a strong cult fanbase (which helps them secure contracts with 1st parties who are willing to risk money in the hopes of creating system selling games) and the studio has a lot of connections in the tight nit Japanese gaming community.  And they have made a couple of reasonably successful games Bayonetta sold 2 million units (still a dissapointment to SEGA but it's long legs should certainly made it profitable) and MGR: Revengance sold 1.5 million on consoles and the PC port sold pretty well given it's short development cycle at Platinum certainly a success.

Compared to Airtight's 200K for Murdered: Soul Suspect across 5 platforms, and Dark Void's 600K. Even Platinum's less successful smaller games like MadWorld (700K), Vanquish (900K) did much better than that. Platinum might not make blockbusters but their quality leads to long legs.

Today we have another big issue. First, we have the AAA studios. They will work with large staffs and make expensive games, with good marketing budgets. The amount of money avaialable for a project in these studios will usually be enough to spend a good marketing budget and achieve sales decent enough to profit (unless you fail multiple projects in a row, like Crytek did). In the opposite side, we have indies with small budgets but with tiny teams that can create a game without big costs (a lot of times they won't even need to pay devs). They won't have marketing budgets, but the costs are low enough so them can get profit with lower sales that can be achieved just with word of mouth and one or two reviews on RockPaperShotgun or any other indie focused website.

The guys that have problems are the ones that sit in the middle. They are like large indies or small AAAs. They won't have a budget as large as the full AAAs, so marketing costs are cut down. But at the same time, they can rely only on word of mouth like indies because they need way more sales to profit because of bigger costs. This middleground is where devs are having more trouble. No developer in the world is capable of delivering a hit after another. I know someone will screan ND or Nintendo, but this guys actually cancel a lot of projects in the begining if they think it won't succeed. They are just experienced enough to notice that something won't work in an early stage and cut if off, instead of releasing it. Any dev will fail several projects before hitting (hopefully) a good game. But indies can fail because the costs are low and AAAs can fail because they have the money. The guys in the middle don't have the money and have high costs, so it's better to do it right in the first try and that's surely a harsh request.

Metal Gear Rising sold 1.5M, Bayonetta sold 2M. Murdered is at 200K and probably won't have any kind of legs with the bad Meta. You don't have to sell dozens of millions, but Platinum got way better sales than Airtight.

Platinum had a 4 game deal with SEGA so it didn't really matter that the games didn't have super strong day 1 sales. by the time the deal was done Bayonetta had become a quite good seller and they had a reputation for making high quality games. This allowed them to secure new projects like rebooting the troubled metal gear rising project for Konami and a multi game deal with Nintendo (which led to their worst performing game which was also their most expensive The Wonderful 101 but luckily it's the Wii U so the industry understands) and also more recently the creators of Korra wanted a high quality adaption and picked Platinum and Microsoft also picked them for their token Japanese game this gen (hey it can't go as badly as their JRPGs last gen).

Airtight didn't have day one sales, quality, legs or a good reputation for quick development so they died.

As for Nintendo they make some of the highest selling games in the industry and have multimillion selling games they consider failiures. WTF are you even talking about. Also as a platform holder they have higher margins on their games as they don't need to pay their licensing fee (~$8 per copy for retail iirc).

Not surprised, Murdered: SS is the worst game I have played in a long time.

You seem rather confused. Infinite Space (a DS game) is Platinum Game's worst selling title [http://www.vgchartz.com/game/35541/infinite-space/]. You're starting to sound very very silly. Despite what deal Platinum Games had with Sega, that doesn't negate the fact that their games have sold poorly. Even so, Platinum Games didn't go bankrupt, because they didn't foolishly spend all of the money their publisher provided and Platinum Games was managed very well, unlike Airtight. Once again, Platinum Games didn't fooshly spend their money and they were managed very well. They made it so they continued to profit, despite low sales of their games.

Airtight Games had many issues going on with them. Their ability the budget their games and their abilities to do an assortment of things such as: releasing games without bugs, allocating budgets, signing deals with publishers, allocating resources and focusing their games onto several markets (which they simply REFUSED to do).

Airtight was formed back in 2004, but they didn't release a game until 2010. They were already struggling to get a game out the door. Their first game, Dark Void, was an hugely ambitious project, because they spent a lot of money to get it developed. They even had the composer of Battlestar Galactica compose its' sound track! It was a big budgeted game that flopped and flopped hard. They worked on an untitled game for about 8 months which was soon after cancalled. They released another game under the direction of Kim Swift. This game was created with a limited budget, but flopped anyway. Then after that, they started making mobile games, which profits for those games are uber thin. They released an Ouya exclusive game (which was foolish of them). Afterwards, they came out with another big budget game which flopped again. They've only worked on one major project at a time. The projects they've worked concurrently were the mobile games and the Ouya title. They came from making mobile an Ouya games to trying to create another big budget title. Airtight games was very poorly managed and they took on more than they could handle. This is what killed them. The budgeting was the major issue they had.

As for Nintendo, you still don't get it. Nintendo doesn't spend huge amounts of money outside of Zelda or even Mario. Yet, they still profit, regardless if they pay royalities or not. Nintendo doesn't even charge $60 dollars for all of their games - which would take up the portion any other company would take for licensing. Nintendo still has to pay retailers to store their games in their warehouses. Nintendo still has to pay to have their games shipped. These are added expenses you're not thinking of. Yet, even when a game such as Yoshi's Island on the 3DS flops, they still profit. 

The gaming industry can learn from this. It was in their rights to not release their games on Wii U. They're closing the doors, should Nintendo owners feel sad. I don't have anything bad to say but nothing good either.

So your saying they went out of business for not releasing their mid tier game on a Nintendo console ? 

Well they co-developed Infinite Space Nude Maker was lead on that so I don't count it., also sales expectations for a portable game are of course much lower than console games. But sure if you include Infinite Space that sold less (but still lost a lot less money). And again Platinum games has a much better track record that Airtight ever had, they have multi million sellers under their belt. And the reason they are still in business is because publishers keep funding their games, if they had a couple games cancled (Airtight were working on at least two unanounced projects which were presumably cancled after Soul Suspect bombed which is why they are closing up shop) they would probably be in big trouble as well. If Airtight had another publisher willing to fund more projects they would still be in business as well. Which is the main issue here, Airtight weren't good developers all their games were mediocre to poor and sold like shit. They run out of publishers willing to fund projects at a studio that had proven it's self to be incapable of making a well recived game at any budget level, end of story. No one is arguing that Airtight was a well managed studio but their failings have nothing to do with AAA as you are trying to spin it. As we have both pointed out they tried and failed at small budget titles as well as mid tier ones. Making bad games was their problem and that wouldn't change no matter the budgets they delt with.

It should also be noted that Airtight games actually has 50 games to their credit. You see their main business in the early years was outsourced contract work. Dark Void may have been their first internally developed title but they worked on lots of projects before that. Which is how they managed to stay in business as long as they did despite never making a single successful game themselves. But there are plenty of competent studios many of which operate out of much cheaper parts of the world. Dark Void wasn't exactly super ambitious and having Bear McCreary as a composer isn't that impressive, I mean The Angry Videogame Nerd has had him compose things for him, as well as the F2P indie game Moon Breakers. As for not making games for enough platforms the only ones they didn't release games on is Nintendo and even good 3rd party studios haven't managed to crack that nut I doubt it would of helped them. They also worked in diverse genres. Not operating in enoughmarkets was not one of their problems.

As for Nintendo have you looked at their financials lately? Profiting is not something they have been doing lately. Despite releaseing games like Pokemon X/Y that sold over 11 million copies, more than enough to offset 3-4 Wonderful 101 sized bombs easy even after splitting revenue with GameFreak (which they own 50% of so get most of that back).

And just to clarify I agree that keeping budgets under control is a good thing and that publishers should put out more lower budget mid tier titles (like M: SS) we just don't seem to agree that spending too much on games was Airtight's main problem and not the fact that they just didn't make good games. It doesn't matter if your budget is $5m or $500m if you don't make games that people want to play you aren't going to last long.

Anyway wer are arguing circles around simantics, I am O U T out.

Also side note, why the fuck do you format your posts like that? It just makes them harder to read...