This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

Platinum Games, the developer behind last year’s Switch action-extravaganza Astral Chain, has announced that it has partnered with Chinese firm Tencent. The tech giant is investing in the Japanese developer as it looks to publish more of it’s own titles. Tencent are also handling the Switch’s launch in China of course.

Revealing the news on the company’s official site, Platinum’s President and CEO Kenichi Sato reassured fans that the company will be maintaining it’s independence, despite the new partnership:

This partnership has no effect on the independence of our company, and we will continue operations under our current corporate structure. We hope to use this capital to strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing.
We also hope that this partnership can give us a wider global perspective, while still creating high quality games that stay true to our name.
Thank you as always for your continued support. Please look forward to what we have in store.

As for what the developer does have in store, we’re only aware of Bayonetta 3 so far, though we’ve heard little of the game since it’s initial announcement back at the Game Awards in 2017. Still, speaking to Inside Games earlier this month, Sato said there are ‘several big announcements’ planned for early this year.

Hopefully one of those reveals will be some more info on the upcoming third outing for the Umbra witch, though we’d definitely take an Astral Chain sequel if there’s one on offer too!

Are you excited by Platinum’s future with this new investment and upcoming projects? Tell us what you’re hoping to see in the comments!

Source: PlatinumGames.com, Inside Games (via Siliconera)