Honestly, Platinum isnt actually a good developer at all.
Sure. They make some good games, but honestly they have had more misses than hits. I don't think they have enough talent or prestige to really hang in there like that.
Maybe with right leadership, they could turn the tide. Honestly their Nintendo partnerships seem to work out the best. However, for every Bayonetta or Nier, they have even more stinkers like Korra, Wonderful 101, or even canceled games like Scalebound.
The fact that they seem to always be close to financial ruin really demonstrates that.
I was going to say that The Wonderful 101 being lumped in there is harsh, but I always forget just how "meh" it's reception was. It certainly wasn't terribly received, I think there's some Nintendo/Sony first party titles that have gotten similar scores and have been received as good generally, but the bad sales don't back up its quality. Truthfully though, I feel like if you talk to actual action game nerds that have played their less popular games, most of them don't see them as misses. I know that Wonderful is considered amazing by some and that the Transformers game they made is apparently actually pretty good. It's just ... you know, even within that niche, those games aren't among the most played titles.
I'm not sure I'd say that Platinum "isnt actually a good developer at all". There's evidence that they're a great developer when they aren't licensing themselves out to low budget games or being poorly managed. It's just they don't have a great track record. Case in point, they've made Bayo 2, Nier: Automata, and Astral Chain all since 2014. That's not a great number of games and considering their studio size it isn't super impressive, but if those were the only games Platinum made since 2014, they'd be seen as one of the more consistent Japanese developers. Problem is, we have shit like Babylon's Fall on the horizon.
I wonder if Square Enix would see potential in basically turning them into Neir and support studio like Monolithsoft is for Xenoblade.
That would be disappointing honestly. Nier is a series that really doesn't work to Platinum's strengths imo. People hype up the Nier Automata combat so much as a reason that game is good, but it's like a 45-65 hour game and most of it consists of mashing buttons. Them being the Nier studio would be so, so disappointing, even if I'll admit Automata is the best game they've made since Bayonetta 2. Like you could get basically any developer on the planet and make a game like Nier Automata, because so much of it's vision is just standard ARPG + Yoko Taro's weird shit, and he's not a part of Platinum.
In retrospect, it's weird that game became such a part of their heritage and studio culture. It makes sense, especially if you know it's connection to Astral Chain, but it's weird.