We know that when he's got good things to say, he'll say it. He was very vocal about his respect for Bungie. But when what he sees is not up to par, we now know he can be quite harsh about it. Keiji Inafune, father of Mega Man and Capcom's head of R&D, was less than impressed with what he saw at TGS 09, and this led him to believe that the Japanese gaming industry is finished.

When a guy of Keiji Inafune's caliber agrees to have an interview with you and says he's interested in a collaboration, you will need more than a pinch and a slap across the face to get you back down to Earth. The guy is, after all, a legend. That's what happened to the guys at Bungie, who managed to sit down with Capcom's legendary R&D man.

Nintendo and Capcom's big bosses are headlining this year's CEDEC over in Japan. At the developer conference, Shigeru Miyamoto will talk about how to start game development while Inafune will be lecturing people on an area yet to be revealed. More in the full article.

During the recently-concluded Tokyo Game Show 2007, Capcom bigwig Keiji Inafune talked about Mega Man's 20th anniversary, detailing the highs and lows of his career all throughout and some future plans for the series.

Inafune took the opportunity to dispel the myth that he's the creator of Mega Man, saying that his mentor had a design prior to his entry to Capcom and he only created about half of what the blue blaster looks like. "I didn't get to completely design a Mega Man from scratch until Zero," he narrates. "But I realized that this design wouldn't be accepted as Mega Man, so I had another designer create the new Mega Man, and I worked on Zero to release him as the 'other main character' that would steal all the good scenes!"

One particularly noteworthy anecdote came in when he recounted the story of how he designed early boss Elecman. ""When I created this character, I tried to make a character that looked [like] it was from an American comic," says Inafune. "You'd see characters like him in Spider-Man or X-Men. It was pretty hard to design him, and I had to make sure that he didn't end up looking like an S&M queen."

Asked what his favorite game from the Mega Man series is, some of you may be amazed to know that it's Mega Man Legends, released in 1998 for the PSX. The game received lukewarm reception from aghast fans who were shocked with a 3D action-RPG spin-off of the series. Inafune says that the game might have been to advanced for its time, leaving what could have been a good game under-appreciated.

"I'd love to make a revival," says a determined Inafune. "But it's really difficult to have your company give you a budget for a game that flopped. I'm saving up so that I can make it on my own." He says that given today's technology, the idea might just work and sell better than it did almost a decade ago. "I'm making it my dream to create Mega Man Legends 3 before either I die or leave my company. With the continued support of fans, I hope that the Mega Man series continues to live on, and that we'll get to see its 30th and 40th anniversaries."

Keiji Inafune is the same creative mind behind other big Capcom titles such as Dead Rising, Onimusha, and the very first Street Fighter game. He continues to be a major influence in Capcom's projects and is considered as one of the gaming industry's true-blue trendsetters.

Ouch.

Kotaku reports on a GDC 2007 Q&A session with Lost Planet producer Keiji Inafune, and when he was asked about the closure of avant-garde Clover Studio, he had one thing to say. Bluntly. They didn't sell, therefore...

Keiji clarified that he DID think that Viewtiful Joe and Okami were great games (heck, critical acclaim agrees with him there). The problem was that "Games are not a work of art... it's a product... a commodity" (heck, sales of Okami sadly agree with that perspective. So do Lost Planet sales).

Based on this quote of Inafune's response, it seems that there must have been a clash of perspectives, and on approaches to promoting a game, between Clover and Capcom:

... the producer didn't do his work. The producers work is to make the team make good games and then sell those games. The producer has to do the promotion... Certainly to get good reviews is part of his job. However, the producer has to make sure the game sells [on par with the review]. I think the producer dropped the ball there. Capcom said they would do it, but Clover said "Oh, we'll do it ourselves." And I think this was a failure.

To paraphrase: it doesn't matter if you're the great Picasso, you STILL need a market-savvy marketer if you wanna make mad money (well, that definitely means advertising majors have their job secure in the gaming industry). A sad commentary in a mass-market industry, or the harsh Darwinian reality of the economics and psychology of gaming?

Verily, a company does sit on its bottom line, but where lies the line between the bottom line and racing for the bottom?