Did SEGA Just Tease a Vanquish PC Port in the Recent Bayonetta Update?

Earlier this month — the day after Bayonetta released on PC — I wrote an article Platinum Games and its desire to port all of its games to the PC. Turns out the company might be closer to fulfilling that dream than we thought, or at least it is for games such as Vanquish.

The Steam version of Bayonetta received a tiny update today, a mere 22kb worth of data. A file that size probably couldn’t change anything in the game, and it didn’t. However, a NeoGAF user by the name of BernardoOne noticed that the update added a little extra avatar hidden away in the Extras folder:

Longtime Platinum Games fans will no doubt recognize that avatar as the helmet/armor worn by the main character of Vanquish — and possible inspiration for the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance character Jetstream Sam — Sam Gideon. What does Gideon have to do with Bayonetta? Absolutely nothing. However, Platinum Games has stated it wants to port Vanquish to PC via Steam, so maybe this is SEGA/Platinum Game’s way of teasing the PC release of Vanquish.

Let’s back up a bit to earlier this month, before Bayonetta was announced for PC. Oh, right, that never actually happened. Bayonetta was just released without any official announcement. People only suspected SEGA planned to release a PC port because of the 8-bit Bayonetta not-so-April Fool’s joke game and a teaser site hinted at by the 8-bit game’s achievements. It would not be a stretch to assume this little user avatar is meant to tease the PC release of Vanquish.

If our assumptions are correct, and a PC port of Vanquish is just over the horizon, then, publishers willing, we could potentially expect several other Platinum Games games to receive PC ports. Since Bayonetta and Vanquish were both published by SEGA, other games published by SEGA such as MadWorld, Anarchy Reigns, and Infinite Space stand the best chance of releasing on Steam. Nintendo-owned games such as The Wonderful 101 and Star Fox Zero/Guard will probably never release on the PC, but that leaves Bayonetta 2 in a strange position. The first Bayonetta was published by SEGA and is now available on Steam, but Bayonetta 2 was published (and fully funded) by Nintendo, yet SEGA was still involved in a consulting/advisor role. So who gets the final say on whether or not Bayonetta 2 can see a PC port? No one knows. Regardless, I fully expect that if we receive a PC version of Vanquish, Platinum Games will use it to tease its next release on Steam.