Azure Striker Gunvolt is Keiji Inafune's next game

Newsbrief: The Japanese indie festival Bitsummit is going on now, and during the event Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune announced that he's working with Inti Creates to develop Azure Striker Gunvolt, a side-scrolling action game that will launch later this year on the Nintendo 3DS eShop service in Japan. Given that Inafune has launched multiple companies since leaving Capcom in 2010 and is now simultaneously leading development on the crowdfunded Mighty No. 9 and working with Team Ninja on its upcoming Ninja Gaiden spinoff game Yaiba, this latest announcement lends credence to his claims that he's not satisfied pouring his energy into a single game. "There are a lot of different things that I want to do, and I don't feel just focusing all of that energy in one company is going to be enough," Inafune told Gamasutra during an interview in 2012. "I need to put that in different directions, in different companies." The Chiba-based Inti Creates was formed by ex-Capcom employees almost twenty years ago, and is perhaps best known for producing games in the Mega Man Zero franchise. In addition to its work on Azure Striker Gunvolt, the studio is collaborating with Inafune and his studio Comcept on the development of Mighty No. 9, which garnered more than $4 million in development funding via Kickstarter and other crowdfunding methods late last year.