Capcom spent the week and a half following Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune's resignation from the Japanese developer reassigning producers to his games and reorganizing the company, Capcom told Kotaku today.
While the loss of the character designer of Mega Man and producer of Onimusha and Dead Rising must come as a blow to the studio, Capcom says it won't impact their games.
"Capcom has been working hard on restructuring its operations over the past few years in order to build a development organization that is not dependent on any single individual," a Capcom spokesman said. "Therefore, we do not believe Mr. Inafune's departure will have an effect on our business operations. Regarding specific titles, we have already assigned new and talented Producers to those titles which have already been announced and their further development is progressing smoothly."
Earlier this year Inafune told gathered press that he would personally be overlooking games made outside of Japan to insure that they were "true" Capcom games.
"Those of you who know me, know how serious I am about trying to make global games on a global scale especially thinking about America and Europe when designing a lot of our titles," he said at the time. "I've been pushing really hard for the last several years to try and gear our games in that direction."
Inafune's role at Capcom was becoming increasingly about managing relationships outside the company with other developers and working with producers internally, something he bemoaned in his blog post announcing his departure. But the soon-to-be former head of Research & Development and Online Business and Global Head of Production at Capcom was also listed as the executive producer on Devil May Cry reboot DmC and Asura's Wrath. He was also listed as the producer on Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe.
With his departure, Capcom is shuffling some of their corporate officers as well.
Managing Corporate Officer Katsuhiko Ichii will be appointed head of Capcom's development organization, backed by a "market-oriented development organization that integrates our marketing and development functions," they told Kotaku.
"The new development management team will continue to carry forward our business and will be comprised of senior figures within the organization including: Corporate Officer Nobuyuki Matsushima; Corporate Officer Jun Takeuchi; Assistant Deputy Head of Consumer Game Business Division Taichiro Genbun; General Manager of CS R&D Strategic Planning Department Hiroyuki Kobayashi and General Manager of Consumer Games Quality Control Department Shutaro Kobayashi."
News of Inafune's Oct. 19 resignation came with rumblings of other talent at the studio leaving Capcom. But the company said they don't believe that will be the case.
"Our development staff is highly motivated to stay with us because of the unique and splendid development environment that Capcom provides," a Capcom spokesman said.
Capcom also stated that the departure of Inafune would not lead to any change in creative focus for the developer.
"We will continue to follow our previously stated policy that calls for collaboration with leading domestic and foreign studios in order to create new titles," they said.
Inafune's resignation is effective from the end of November, but given outstanding vacation time he will leave the company at the end of October, Capcom told Kotaku.