The Real Reason for the Cancellation Revealed.

[Adrian2040]

It was just what we expected. There were not enough people in the devroom for Capcom to allow the game's development to continue. As simple as that.

Keiji Inafune: Bringing Mega Man back from the moon was not an easy mission. [laughs] I was talking about the wall between the creator and the users earlier. That wall was actually even higher than the moon. Because of that, the only way we would have been able to bring Mega Man back is to have the users’ opinions be higher than the wall. So that’s why I took the way that I took with Mega Man Legends 3.

We made this website and you could vote if you wanted Mega Man back. If there were enough votes, we were going to consider creating a new title. However, we weren’t able to get enough people together. So that when I decided to leave Capcom, Capcom decided they weren’t going to do the project anymore. Back then, we were able to gather 10,000 people, but that wasn’t enough for them to decide they were going to do it. That’s why it wasn’t possible to bring Mega Man back from the moon.

Source: www.usgamer.net/articles/tgs-mighty-no-9-the-first-mcdonalds-in-japan-of-video-gaming

[Loken]

Not really surprising. What was Capcom going to expect when the only promotion they did of the project was announce it? I wonder what amount they were looking for. It's not like the only people who would buy it were in the devroom. I don't think they were really interested in it's success at all. I mean we all know they didn't even release the finished prototype. That's a deliberate waste of money. If they released the prototype and it didn't sell well they could say 'oh I'm sorry but there is no interest' instead they canceled it untested. Maybe they were afraid it would be too warmly receipted and that would make canceling it too difficult. That sounds crazy but I think it's believable. If they had said 'Hey guys, if this project does get more traction we will have to cancel it' do you not think we would have rallied around it? I'll never be able to understand exactly why they did things the way they did and I'm not sure if I really want to know.

[satoh]

How many people actually join forums for all of their game developers... I mean, hosting that kind of thing on an in-house website is basically like signing the death warrant right there.
If you want results you have to go where the people are, not expect them to come to you.

Honestly I think its a testament to the fandom that they managed to raise 10000 votes at all on a poll hosted by their own site.

[Dashe]

It's definitely telling that the one goal they DID explicitly set for us, the Blazing 10,000, was actually reached before schedule. Maybe if they'd, you know, given us concrete goals instead of just saying, "We need a lot of people," it wouldn't have blown up in their faces so badly. "We need a lot of people to sign up for this" and "The number of people in this devroom will determine whether this project ever sees the light of day or not" mean two very different things, after all.

[Buster Cannon]

Capcom did really crappy advertising for the MML3 project, and yet they're surprised that it didn't pick up enough steam? Most people, including myself, were under the impression that the game was more or less under development, and they outright stated in a trailer that it was okay to 'sit and watch'.  Putting the onus on the fans being uninterested when you didn't even let them know the impact of their involvement is beyond unfair.  It didn't help that Unity is, functionally, by far one of the worst forums that I've ever posted on, and I remember a bunch of people saying that they couldn't get Servbot numbers or something like that.

That's why I really like what Inafune's doing with the MN9 Kickstarter campaign.  He's straightforward about the scope of the project, and due to his past work we know that he's trustworthy.  In a sense, this is what the Devroom should have been.

[Mikéy]

I believe ultimately it rolls back to Inafune having not been there. If he was there, numbers probably wouldn't have mattered in the first place. But then again, I'm not a corporate machine like Capcom, so. I do believe he was the one who originally got the project into the air after all; food for thought.

[Dashe]

Kickstarter's good because it gives you specific goals to reach. Having that goal outlined in black and white like that is vital to getting any large-scale project off the ground. By large-scale, I mean large-scale in that it requires some kind of a team to run it and isn't just one person slaving away at the thing. I know if we'd had an ultimatum where they said, "If we don't get 50,000 people in the devroom by March 23, 2011, then the project's getting scrapped," we'd have been able to get it. Especially if it were set up like a Kickstarter stretch goal. There were a lot of things a bunch of us were scrambling to get to see.

Maybe if the focus were on getting more people in instead of pitching in assets it'd have worked better, too. From the single, poorly-distributed ad it was looking like they were soliciting for people with skills, not just people in general.

[ZEROrevive]

Sept 21, 2013 14:11:14 GMT -5 Buster Cannon said:

Most people, including myself, were under the impression that the game was more or less under development, and they outright stated in a trailer that it was okay to 'sit and watch'.  Putting the onus on the fans being uninterested when you didn't even let them know the impact of their involvement is beyond unfair.

From my experience at the time, I had not seen the trailer. Not until much later after the game was canceled. Regardless of that, I had no account on Unity and had no interest in making one...because I didn't even know Unity existed either untill I heard about the game. I was going to do as the trailer ironically stated..."Sit and watch". 

Now...what irks me is that they stated this, and yet, it can mean different things. There are no specifics...so do you mean "Join the group, THEN sit and watch"? Or just plainly "Sit and watch, with no action of joining needed"? Do not forget technical complications some users may run into as well..I remember for a while I couldn't even log in using my twitter account. So what if that occurs, and some people cannot join? Do they suddenly not count towards your important number? Non-existant towards the goal? Its a bit of a nitpick, really...

Also a fun fact: I had not seen this game advertised, at all. I had seen Megaman Universe due to a former friend, and then, much later he had found out about MML3. Considering I am no longer with said person now...and that were applied to back then- how would I have learned of this? Simple. I wouldn't have...As many had not either.


Just to note: I don't hate Capcom. I just find that bit of detail a bit unorganized, and in their own fault. I think they should have taken the Monster Hunter 3 approach in terms of advertising (Particularly for ultimate). It made interests grow and gained new consumers of the series....a series that has been around for a while, yet in obscurity. Seems a bit familiar in description, no?

[Avegodro]

Okay I've read this a few times and I'm a bit confused about one point. Kenji Inafune leaves Capcom because they were not able to muster enough people and Capcom says they weren't going to continue the project. Why did it take over eight months for them to finally end it?