When it was announced, Bayonetta 2 was met with a negative reaction from fans on the basis of it being a Wii U exclusive (whereas the first game was published on the Xbox 360 and PS3). In response, Atsushi Inaba, one of the co-producers of the game, and executive director at Platinum Games, said that the game would not have existed without Nintendo's involvement.

During the years in between the first game's release and the second game's announcement, the publisher of the first game, Sega, had been scaling back on the number of games to be released/localized, and Bayonetta had been in danger of never receiving a sequel. Nintendo then approached Platinum about publishing Bayonetta 2 for their new console.