Not ideal

Mighty No. 9's launch hasn't exactly been a success. The title has shipped to middling reviews and performance problems, and a live stream to promote the game ruffled a few feathers (although it should be noted, it now seems that this was the fault of the translator rather than creator Keiji Inafune himself).

The lengthy live stream has now been picked apart in greater depth, and looking beyond the "better than nothing" comment - which we're now pretty sure was former Capcom staffer and stream translator Ben Judd's own sentiment rather than Inafune's - we see a developer who appears to be genuinely sorry that the project has disappointed its fans and backers.

The following comments are taken directly from the live stream and it's vital to remember that Judd is at times putting his own comments into the text.

Inafune points out that the buck stops with him when it comes to Mighty No. 9's problems:

Inafune-san said "You know, I want to word this in a way to explain some of the issues that come with trying to make a game of this size on different platforms." He's like "I'm kind of loath to say this because it's going to sound like an excuse and I don't want to make any excuses. I own all the problems that came with this game and if you want to hurl insults at me, it's totally my fault. I'm the key creator. I will own that responsibility."

He also admits that bringing the game to so many systems was a mistake:

He said "In my many years at Capcom, and Capcom was known for their multi-platform strategy. But never did they ever do 10 SKUs all at the same time, 10 different versions all for one title." Traditionally, this is true—I know, we worked with a lot of different porting houses—usually you have the base game and work on the port after the game was done. In this case, it was do the base game and do the port all at the same time. it ended up being a huge amount of work, more than they actually estimated. Definitely, when they looked at the project, they were wrong about a lot of things. They underestimated how much time, work was going to be necessary. All of those things create a huge amount of pressure.

Another criticism from fans is that Inafune divides his time between too many projects - he's been involved in many other games aside from Mighty No. 9, including Azure Striker Gunvolt and ReCore - but Judd is quick to counter this:

I've [Ben Judd] seen a lot of different comments that suggested Inafune-san was only focused on being a business man and taking the IP and making anime or manga or branching off into a lot of different directions. To your average everyday person, it's going to seem that way. But the reality is, during production, the key creative pieces really happen for the first 70% and then beyond that, it's all about doing porting and bug testing. I promise you Inafune-san's time is best spent focused on taking this IP in new directions. Again, as I said, to be an independent studio and get a chance to own your IP, it just doesn't happen. It does bring in other opportunities, which is great. I guarantee you [that] you want your independent creators and developers to have their IP, you want them to be able to take them in different directions. It gives you more choices as gamers. I 100% stand by this sentiment.

The live stream is pretty long but is worth watching if you want to get a better grip on the challenges Inafune and his team have faced over the past few months - just be aware (as we and many other sites should have been yesterday) that Judd isn't just translating Inafune's words, but injecting his own opinions into the stream.