Former Capcom Head: Dead Rising & Lost Planet Originally Rejected
by Harry Monogenis, posted on 09 May 2011 / 1,804 Views
Capcom's former Head of Development, Keiji Inafune, has revealed some rather surprising information regarding how a couple of Capcom's most popular franchises, Lost Planet and Dead Rising, came to be.
During a series of "Creative Leadership Seminars" held at Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University, Inafune decided to provide some insights into his time working at Capcom; 24 years of it.
According to Inafune, Capcom had a rather strange set of rules, one of them being that making anything but sequels was simply not allowed. Why? Well, Capcom was concerned about the risks involved with making a new IP. The official rule at Capcom was that 70-80% of development needed to be sequels, with the remaining 20% to be focused on making new titles. However, pitching any idea for a new game would simply be declined.
Despite this, Inafune decided to start two new projects: Lost Planet and Dead Rising. Unsurprisingly to him, both projects were rejected while he was showing them off at a presentation. For some reason, he decided to carry on developing them anyway.
Inafune's plan was to exceed the prototype budget that Capcom sets on every prototype version of a game. He did, by a staggering 400% on Lost Planet. By doing this, Capcom was forced to allow the development of Lost Planet to continue, as Inafune had already spent so much money on it.
Both Lost Planet and Dead Rising went on to become huge successes for Capcom. Keiji Inafune believes that him breaking the company's rules saved Capcom.
