Way back in 2010, back when I had a lot more hair a less of a drinking problem, legendary Mega-Man designer Keiji Inafune left Capcom to found comcept, which would sign off a game called “Mighty No. 9”.
Now, us older folk will remember ole Mightie — it was highly touted as Mega Man’s spiritual successor and, at least in practical terms, one of the precursors of crowdfunded games, being almost entirely financed by a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Ultimately, though, the game failed to deliver: some very weird gameplay choices, unfortunately, overshadowed the solid visuals, and reviews were relentless on it. Suffice to say, comcept was in dire waters after its most famous project failed.
It can be found in special, rare offers at Amazon, though.
The whole thing became sort of a cautionary tale, as well as a “unsucess case” for gaming pros, but recently, this whole situation got finally put to rest.
Essentially, comcept is no more.
comcept is officially dissolved by shareholders
It’s not like comcept was sitting on its own, proverbial hands after Mighty No. 9 failed. As an independent company, the studio has developed other games, signing off titles like, Soul Sacrifice, ReCore and Red Ash: The Indelible Legend. In 2017, the brand established a partnership with LEVEL-5 and created LEVEL-5 Comcept.
This would, in turn, make comcept a subsidiary, which developed a slew of mobile games and provided consultancy on outside projects. This, however, would not last, as founder Keiji Inafune himself would depart the company in 2024. As for LEVEL-5, it fully absorbed comcept, killed the LEVEL-5 Comcept brand and became LEVEL-5 Osaka.
Now, as published by Japanese state gazette Kanpo (thank you, GameBiz), the company’s shareholders voted for the full dissolution of the comcept brand, effectively killing it without prejudice.
It’s kind of a bittersweet ending to an otherwise promising concept (pun unapologetically intended): younger gamers likely won’t care as much about this bit of industry news, but I was doing magazines back when Inafune left Capcom — allegedly, he had an axe to grind with the company after they cancelled a Mega-Man project he was helming — and I remember the big deal every outlet made about “the new Inafune studio”.
Still, it’s not like all parties involved lost anything. LEVEL-5 Comcept was already on its down-and-out way for quite some time, so its demise was to be expected. Furthermore, LEVEL-5 itself is still making waves — the Inazuma Eleven series got a lot of praise with the release of Victory Road, and there’s a new Professor Layton game supposedly coming out in 2026.
As for Keiji Inafune, the last bit of news we got from him was his move to Rocket Studio, an exclusively-mobile game maker and publisher, as an executive officer.
