Platinum Games is headed by Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya. A year and a half ago, the three gamemakers were arguably the three brightest stars in Capcom's stable. At least one of their names was bound to turn up at the top of the credits in any of the Osaka, Japan-based game publisher's most critically lauded titles. Then, they suddenly quit the company that had made them famous, leaving behind the game series they had created and signing a new deal - not with Capcom, but with rival game publisher Sega.

"The Wii and DS are missing the kind of games that hard-core gamers want to play," says Inaba (pictured).

Platinum Games is looking to revitalize Japanese gamemaking by going against conventional wisdom. No longer beholden to corporate overlords, Platinum's developers have embraced the freedom of their newfound indie status to create a gory game for Wii, a complex space adventure for Nintendo DS and other compelling titles that could help reverse U.S. game developers' growing dominance of the marketplace.
Here's a look at three upcoming Platinum Games titles:

Mad World: Black, White and Blood-Red (Wii)
Mad World isn't the first Japanese action game to blend over-the-top violence with abstract visuals, but it is the first to do it in black and white. The entirety of this Wii game will be presented in monochrome, with one exception: gallons of red blood.
The result is a game that is simultaneously hilarious and cringe-inducing. And with the Wii's motion controller, you'll be acting out every single crushing blow.

"I want to create the kind of game that will appeal to an international audience," says Mad World's director Shigenori Nishikawa.

The gory game is part of Platinum Games' push to differentiate itself from the flood of casual-oriented Wii and DS games currently on shelves.
"The game lineups aren't interesting!" laughs Inaba when asked what he thinks of the Japanese game market nowadays.

Bayonetta: 'In Winter, One Longs for the Heat' (360 and PS3)
Considerably more realistic than Mad World but no less bloody is Platinum Games' second title: Bayonetta. All that action game fans need to know is that it will be directed by Hideki Kamiya, the creator of DMC and Okami.

"When Devil May Cry came out, nobody had ever seen anything like it. But once the genre was set, there wasn't too much variance within it. There were a lot of games that were very similar. I want to re-create the experience, that sense of something new, branching off in a new direction, setting a new trend."

Infinite Line and One More Secret: 'Things to Accomplish on Our Own' (DS)
Platinum Games and Sega have 2 more announced titles. The first is an outer-space role-playing game called Infinite Line. It's headed by Hifumi Kouno, whose last project for Capcom was Steel Battalion, a giant-robot action game.

That should give you an idea of the complexity that Kouno is attempting to shove into this Nintendo DS game. "The graphics", he said, will "blow you away."

The question still lingers: Why would these designers leave Capcom only to hitch their wagon to Sega?
"We had things we wanted to accomplish on our own," says Inaba. "Once you have a successful game, you have to do sequels because people want them. So before you can ever get around to doing what you truly want to do, what your passion is, you have to work on another sequel."