Interviews// Head of Capcom R&D: Keiji Inafune

SPOnG: Okay, but one of the bigger news stories relating to Devil May Cry 4 recently was the fact that it is now also being developed for Xbox 360… the game is no longer exclusive to PlayStation – what was the thinking behind this decision?

Keiji Inafune: Until now it’s been hard for us to develop multi-platform games, but recently we have developed this development engine that allows us to develop a game in the engine and then put it on to PS3 and 360.

Developing Dead Rising and Lost Planet helped flush out everything in the development tool system – which is now pretty much complete, aside from the usual upgrades – so we decided to use that engine, make it for the 360 and the PS3 with Devil May Cry 4.

So, now we can get the game out into the hands of more gamers - because 360 has such a huge installed base already, especially in the US, and as game makers we want as many people to have the chance to play our games as possible.


SPOnG: What were your impressions of the big three conferences this year?

Keiji Inafune: Well, going to all three conferences I was genuinely impressed with all the line-ups that each platform holder has. For the 360 and PS3 it is clear that a lot of companies are going multi-platform – there was a lot of doubling up of the same titles on both platforms. But at the same time both [Sony and Microsoft] each has a good range of exclusive first-party titles for each console.

As for Nintendo, they had a great line-up too. As usual, there is a good first party line-up with Nintendo – which is where a lot of their strength lies. Capcom, as a company, wants to make sure we stick with Nintendo as well, trying to make games that are hopefully of the same level of quality as Nintendo’s own games, taking advantage of the unique Nintendo hardware.


SPOnG: On that topic, how has Capcom’s relationship with Nintendo changed over the last ten or fifteen years?

Keiji Inafune: I can’t really get into too many specifics, you know. Over the years things change. New consoles come and go. At Capcom we’ve always done our best to support Nintendo and to have a good relationship with them and they return the favour by supporting us as much as they can.


SPOnG: For me, one of the highlights of the show so far has to be Nintendo’s Wii Fit, as demo’ed by Mr Miyamoto yesterday at the conference. Any ideas how you might incorporate that new peripheral [the Wii Balance Board] into development at Capcom?

Keiji Inafune: Of course! When I saw Wii Fit yesterday, at the same time you did, we all thought – everybody on the Capcom team – that this was something genuinely new and is definitely going to be popular and as such is something we are definitely going to support. So the pressure is on us now to go home next week and start brainstorming about the things we can potentially use it for and do with it.


SPOnG: What about any other Wii projects that gamers might look forward to from Capcom in 2008?

Keiji Inafune: We do have some very great things in the works for the Wii next year, but we have plenty of games planned for the next two or three years on all formats – Wii, PS3, 360, DS, PSP, PC. Lots of announcements ahead!


SPOnG: I just wanted to ask you a little about the differences between Japanese and Western gamers and games developers. With Lost Planet and Dead Rising being developed specifically with a Western audience in mind – how have those games done in Japan?

Keiji Inafune: Well of course they haven’t sold as well as they have done in Europe and America. The installed base of 360 owners in Japan is still very small in comparison with Europe and America. But saying that most of the 360 owners in Japan bought these two titles. If there were more people owning 360s in Japan then we would have sold even better. So I think we can say that both games were hits in all territories. To us they did a lot better than we expected in Japan.