Nintendo fans have turned to Twitter recently to rally support for the upcoming Wii U title, Bayonetta 2. Gamers anticipating the soon-to-be released game have adopted the hashtag OperationPlatinum. Its goal? To help Bayonetta 2 sell one million copies.
The hashtag was originally created last month by a Youtuber, DocTre81, in what seems to be a response to remarks made by Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemont, regarding the types of games Wii U owners tend to buy during an interview with Game Informer:
"The company isn’t abandoning Nintendo entirely. Rather, it is simply shifting its focus on the platform. “What we see is that they are very interested in Just Dance, very interested by other kinds of games," Guillemot says. “So what we are trying to do is to focus more on the types of games they are interested in."
Since then, the hashtag has picked up steam on Twitter, with PlatinumGames' creative producer of Scalebound, JP Kellams, agreeing to wear a shirt featuring the hashtag on September 20th when the game launches in Japan, more than a month before hitting North America on October 24th. According to DocTre81, the latest "mission" for #OperationPlatinum supporters is to tweet at IGN's Jose Otero, who hosts the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.
The original game, Bayonetta, debuted in 2009 in Japan, and to the rest of the world in January of the following year. Although the game was well-received among critics, in a 2013 interview with Polygon, PlatinumGames co-founder, Hideki Kamiya, stated that the game "didn't sell what we wanted it to sell."
Originally published by SEGA, to date, Bayonetta has sold roughly two million copies worldwide across both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A Wii U version of Bayonetta will be included on a separate disc along with Bayonetta 2.
Whether or not #OperationPlatinum can achieve its goal remains to be seen, but if the sales of its predecessor are any indication, supporters will face an uphill battle to push the sequel to the one-million mark.