Capcom: There is no franchise we would not entrust to a western developer

It's no secret that Capcom has been all about the western co-productions this generation. Bionic Commando. Dark Void. Dead Rising 2. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. The upcoming Lost Planet 3, Remember Me and DmC. A large proportion of the company's output over the last few years reads like one big pan-hemispheral love-in. A love-in spawning offspring of admittedly variable attractiveness, but one that looks to continute for a good while.

So is there any of its storied franchses that Capcom deems too precious, too pure, or too fundamentally Capcom to entrust to an external western developer? Resident Evil? Mega Man? Street Fighter maybe? At a recent DmC hands-on day (the very day which produced our latest hands-on), we asked Hideaki Itsuno, Director of Devil May Cry 2, 3 and 4 is there's any franchise Capcom would never hand to the west. His answer?

"No. There's no game that we absolutely would not consider developing in collaboration with another western developer. Especiall because we know that there are other understanding developers like Ninja [Theory] who've worked with us on DmC, who get what we're trying to do."

So there you have it. Maybe Cliff Bleszinski's offer to "fix" Resident Evil wasn't too wide of the mark at all. If you see him sitting in airport brandishing a pizza any time soon, you'll know why.