Vita won't benefit from 'a lot of otaku games,' says Inafune

Game designer Keiji Inafune has been very critical of the Japanese market, both before and after leaving Capcom to pursue his own projects. Now that he's calling the shots with his own studios, he's announced several titles ranging from the cute and fluffy to the dark and grisly. On the gruesome end of the spectrum is Soul Sacrifice, which Inafune says he is putting on the PlayStation Vita because his creative goals of appealing to Western audiences are a good fit for what the device needs.

"The idea is to have a game that Western audiences will find appealing, while also making sure that it will also sell well here in Japan," Inafune told the PlayStation Blog. "The Western audience must feel willing to play this game. PS Vita is not going to benefit if you just have a lot of otaku games on it - you need something like this. It needs dark and deep titles like Soul Sacrifice."

Though he concedes that his younger self probably would have found the game "grotesque," he says that having grown up and become more aware of Western sensibilities is important. "Back then I was really only thinking about myself and trying to make things that I personally thought were interesting. That consumed me 25 years ago."

Of course, Soul Sacrifice actually is pretty grotesque. The game involves offering severed body parts to a demon in exchange for combat abilities. Inafune apparently has a pretty dark idea of what we westerners like in our video games.