PlatinumGames, the Japanese game development studio founded in 2007, recently entered into a partnership with Chinese giant Tencent in order to receive funding for its next projects.

　　The company's goal going forward will be to develop original IPs for multiple platforms and publish them, too, whereas in the past they were forced to work on another publisher's IP.

　　Interestingly, though, according to renowned Microsoft insider Brad Sams, PlatinumGames was evaluated by the big M for acquisition last year.

　　Pretty sure last year Microsoft was looking to buy them, guess that deal fell apart or they decided to go another direction.

　　— Brad Sams (@bdsams) January 31, 2020

　　We know Microsoft is looking for Asian developers to bolster its Xbox Game Studios roster and PlatinumGames would have definitely been a great option (even if a little surprising after the failure of the Scalebound project) for that purpose.

　　The studio returned to glory with NieR: Automata (published by Square Enix) in 2017 and released another great game last year with Astral Chain on the Nintendo Switch, which we've selected as one of the best action games of the year. Here's Francesco's final summary from the review:

　　Astral Chain is, without a doubt, one of the best games ever released by Platinum Games and one of the best Nintendo Switch exclusives to date. With its combination of explosive action gameplay, which masterfully blends together mechanics taken from previous games developed by the studio, engaging investigation and exploration mechanics, an enjoyable story and huge amount of content, Astral Chain is a game that no fan of action games should pass on. That's even in spite of some issues here and there, such as the low challenge level and unbalanced evaluation system that makes it too easy to get S+ ranks.

　　PlatinumGames also worked on Granblue Fantasy: Relink before Cygames moved all development internally in 2019; another current project is Babylon's Fall, another title due to be published by Square Enix. We recently got the first taste of gameplay, with more to come at some point this Summer.