Hiroyuki Kobayashi, having worked on titles including the original Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 4, was at E3 this year to talk about his newest project, Devil May Cry 4. We sat down with him and got the lowdown on the new gameplay, why DMC4 is multiplatform, and the truth about developing for the PS3.

GameSpy: Thanks for meeting us today. Could you introduce yourself?
Hiroyuki Kobayashi: My name is Hiroyuki Kobayashi and I'm a producer at Capcom. Devil May Cry 4 is one of my games, also in Japan I'm the producer for Sengoku Basara.
GameSpy: How do you feel about next-gen, to start with?
Kobayashi: It's definitely a fun experience to work with the new next-gen consoles, especially with the variety of things you can do, more graphics and whatnot. But since this was the very first title Capcom released on the PS3, it was definitely a hard step to actually go through. Nobody knows anything about how to develop on the PS3, nobody really had that experience working with PS3 games. So, they're basically the first team to kind of pioneer within Capcom to release a next-gen [PS3] game.
GameSpy: Is that part of why it became multi-platform?
Kobayashi: It wasn't that the PS3 was a hard-to-work with machine. Capcom has a PC-based engine that they use to develop games and Devil May Cry 4 was developed with that same PC engine. Basically it branches out from there. You can have it on one central PC engine, and then make it compatible for the PS3 or the 360, so it's really just one workflow. So it really wasn't just that the PS3 was a hard-to-work with machine. Also, Capcom's operational goal was to release games on multiple platforms so that more players could actually play the games. Because the 360 is a popular console for both the North American market and Europe, it was natural for Capcom to branch out as well.
GameSpy: So we saw DMC4 and got hands-on with it at Capcom's pre-E3 event. A lot of the press saw it and thought "It's just a prettier DMC." But then they played it and thought, "Oh wow, it's a prettier DMC!" Is the team happy with the approach of minute improvements that really take advantage of the graphical capability, or is it just a stopgap?
Kobayashi: Of course, since this game is released on the PS3 and the 360, the graphical improvement is like a baseline, a minimum It's a minimum thing that they need to conquer. But bringing in the new element of the Devil Bringer was done because the team is always looking for new ways to make unique action games. That's why the Devil Bringer was brought about; to bring new action to the old DMC style. It's a constant struggle to come up with new ideas, new improvements of course, and obviously we'll continue to improve with the new releases.

GameSpy: How much does the Devil Bringer having a ranged throw change the whole impact of the game? As opposed to only being able to grab from up close...
Kobayashi: Of course, it was the goal to come up with a new action game, to keep up with fresh action games. Having the Devil Bringer enables the player to bring the enemies to the characters. Of course Dante and Nero have the sword and the guns, where the characters would actually repel the enemy, and then you have to actually go to the enemy and do the combos and such. Adding the new element of pulling in the enemy and then chaining combos is completely new. So that was the idea to use Devil Bringer with this new release. Also, what was hard to implement with the Devil Bringer, in terms of graphics and animations, was the number of variations you can use. So many combinations and so many movements, it was definitely a challenge.