Keiji Inafune’s talk was in a different style than most, taking the form of a live interview. The creator of Mega Man, Onimusha, and Dead Rising and head of Capcom Production Studio 2 has recently been focusing on games for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles, but did have a few things to say about Nintendo.

Inafune first focused on the creative process and noted that most Japanese developers do not stand up to their bosses, and games suffer when they allow their ideas to be shot down. He mentioned one instance where he ignored management for six months in order to get his team going in the creative direction he wanted. He praised them saying that when he comes up with an idea and they tell him that it will be too hard to do, they always manage to deliver it anyway. Inafune later admitted that he was also guilty of this.

Asked why he felt Clover’s artistic games such as Viewtiful Joe and Okami failed commercially, Inafune noted that games are not art, they are products, commodities. He explained that when people think about paintings by Picasso and Van Gogh, the end result is beauty, but the end result of games are sales. He said flatly that the producer did not do his job and that is why the games failed. He said that Capcom offered to promote the games, but Clover insisted on doing it themselves. Even though the reviews were good, he believes that the producer “dropped the ball" in promoting the games to the level of their reviews. He believes that even with a great director, without a great producer, the game will not sell, and that was Clover’s downfall.

While the game engine Capcom developed for Dead Rising and Lost Planet was meant to be cross-platform, they were not able to make it work with the Wii. Instead, they are looking to use the Resident Evil 4 engine in Wii games, and despite his recent work on more cinematic games, he is still interested in creating mascots like Mega Man. Mega Man, it turns out, is seen as a kids’ game in Japan, and is not purchased by adults. This is a big reason that Mega Man titles are primarily released on handhelds. In the US, things are different, and people of all ages appreciate the series, and he hopes to create new characters with this appeal.

He mentioned that a secret new project is underway, but would not confirm if it would appear on the Wii. When asked whether mature games would appear on Nintendo systems, Inafune noted that Nintendo’s more recent stance regarding such games gives them a better opportunity to bring such games to the Wii and that all three platforms would be receiving their share of mature games. On a lighter note, he explained that while Japanese do not appreciate the zombie horror genre like Americans do, he made his staff watch a zombie movie every night to better appreciate them.

When asked what he thought of the Nintendo DS’s dominance of the Japanese game market, Inafune had both good a bad things to say. First, he thought that such a complete dominance was dangerous, and it is hard to compete with the platforms’ manufacturer. However, since it is based on older hardware, the platform makes it easier for smaller, independent developers to make games for, a major positive aspect of the system.