Director of Bayonetta, Hideki Kamiya, is leaving PlatinumGames

Hideki Kamiya, the director of Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101, announced in a tweet that he will be leaving PlatinumGames on October 12th of this year. "This decision has been made after careful consideration based on my own beliefs and it was by no means an easy one. However, I believe this is for the best. I will continue to be creative in my own way. I hope you will keep your eyes open."

PlatinumGames has also shared a letter about Kamiya's departure on their official Twitter account: "We are deeply grateful for his creative ideas, leadership, and contribution to the growth of PlatinumGames from our inception to the present day. We are confident that he will continue to be successful as a game developer in the future. We look forward to seeing how the gaming industry grows with him, making it a better place. We wish him all the best for the future!"

Kamiya was a co-founder of PlatinumGames, then known as Seeds Inc., in 2006 along with Shinji Mikami, Tatsuya Minami, and Atsushi Inaba. He has been with the company for 17 years and currently holds the position of Vice President. However, he is probably better known for his earlier works. He began his career at Capcom, where he gained recognition for directing Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry. He even worked on the very first Resident Evil game alongside Mikami. What he will do next remains an open question for everyone, but based on PlatinumGames and his own statements, it is clear that he is not done developing games.

Hideki Kamiya was promoted to Vice President of PlatinumGames last year but is also the director of Project G.G., a new superhero game that concludes Kamiya's trilogy following Viewtiful Joe and The Wonderful 101.

Last July, he mentioned that the scope had "expanded greatly," but since 2020, we haven't seen any more trailers. This vague teaser image gave us a brief glimpse of the hero growing to the size of a skyscraper to engage in a Kaiju-style battle with a gigantic monster. It is unclear what will happen to Project G.G. now that Kamiya has left PlatinumGames.

With Kamiya's departure, only one of the four original founders remains at PlatinumGames: Atsushi Inaba, who currently serves as President and CEO.

Minami left the company in 2016, while Mikami departed as early as 2010 to establish Tango Gameworks, where he developed the spiritual successor to Resident Evil, The Evil Within. He has recently left Tango Gameworks and Xbox, and similar to Kamiya, it is unclear what he will do next.