It's safe to say that Capcom has lost a lot of their good will with gamers nowadays and one major reason is the mishandling of the much-anticipated Mega Man Legends 3. Despite being in development for over a year, and even in the face of significant fan support behind the title, the game was eventually cancelled - without ever getting off the ground.
To say that fans were unhappy with the cancellation would be a major understatement but fans will be even less happy to find out that Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune offered to return to Capcom to help finish the title, but was turned away.
It's been almost a year since Inafune decided to leave Capcom, due to what many theorize was an overly strict publisher that made it hard for the developer to to exercise his creativity. Inafune has since explained that he planned to start his own independent company and resume game making. However, he wanted to finish the projects that he had started with Capcom, which included Mega Man Legends 3 - but, for unknown reasons, Capcom said no.
Check out Inafune's version of the story (courtesy of Gameblurb):
So, I told them that I was going to found my own independent company and leave Capcom. However, I stated that I was ready to make a contract with them so that I could keep working on those projects that I started. I couldn’t start making contracts with other publishers for sure if Capcom agreed to the proposition, but I wanted to see those projects that I started to completion. But it couldn’t be done. They answered, ‘We have no need to do that.’
“[I went to the trouble of]…Finding the right time, gathering the team members, planning strategies, all so we could barely start on Mega Man Legends 3. I really don’t want to quit at this crucial moment…but I can’t keep going at Capcom. I am too tired to keep going. I wanted to leave Capcom to recharge my energy, and support Capcom from there, but it seems they don’t allow it. I want to make all my effort to keep Legends 3 alive, but I’m really not sure I can do it.”
This is definitely a confusing decision on Capcom's part. Inafune was willing to place his own plans on-hold - just to finish a title that the developer had already put a year's worth of effort into and the publisher passed. It really doesn't help the now-common fan theory, albeit somewhat unrealistic from a business standpoint, that Capcom seems to be deliberately trying to kill-off its star franchise in the Mega Man series. Perhaps, if true, this stems from some sort of grudge with Inafune himself, since he created Mega Man?
What do you think of this whole mess? What possible reason could Capcom have for not wanting Inafune to finish Mega Man Legends 3?
Source: Gameblurb [via Kotaku]