Keiji Inafune of ex-Capcom fame is running multiple companies. If you’ve been following his post-Capcom adventures, you’ve probably heard of Comcept and Intercept. The former is devoted to developing new I.P. while the latter is a more “traditional” developer. Speaking with Gamasutra at GDC, Inafune revealed that he also has a third company, DiNG, which will focus on mobile phone games.
When asked if managing three separate companies is a tough job, Inafune replied that it’s actually easier than his old job as Capcom’s head of R&D. “When I was the head of R&D at Capcom, I was in charge of 900 people,” Inafune says. “Now with these three companies, all of the staff added up, it’s around 30 people, so yes. Easy task.”
So, what can Inafune do now that he couldn’t at Capcom? Pretty much anything he wants, he says. “One of the things that I can do now that I couldn’t do at Capcom is I can just jump into some new creative venture that I never could,” Inafune reveals.
“Like at Capcom, even if I had a really good idea, I had to sit there and pass it by a bunch of approval processes and get the okay from people to move forward,” he explains. “So, it would take six months. Here, I can have some great idea, and the very next day just say, ‘We’re going to do that,’ and we start doing it. So, just being able to move very quickly behind some of the creative ideas I have is something that is nice to have at the company.”
Inafune also says that, at his companies, he plans to give younger developers a chance to rise up through the ranks and be directors, which is something most Japanese companies don’t allow until a much later age. Inafune is currently working on two announced titles—KAIO: King of Pirates for the Nintendo 3DS (above) and an unnamed title for the PlayStation Vita.
