This was definitely a great interview, props to both Emperor Cow for his initiative and Itagaki for granting his time! It was nice to see him argumenting on the matters and keeping a polite attitude for all the time. On a sidenote I liked the story behind the Valhalla's name and overall I really appreciated his words of interest for the Palestina' situation.
I can't say to agree with everything Itagaki said overall about the part of beginners not being able to play the game in a succesful way (I don't know basically anything of frames and I consider myself something more of a beginner but definitely far from a good player, again I'm perfectly able to win matches but overall to realize in a general way the reason because I'm winning or losing against my opponents), and the fanservice being included in DoA5 as reason for compensating this (people demanded it since the times of the Alpha demo, in memory of what DoAX2 offered and so assuming that it could be included even in the return of the fighting one because the distinction between the two series was misunderstood or never realized with the fame of the vollyeball spinoff sequel contaminating the main one).
His point of view as designer and the four pillars way to create the game is pretty interesting (actually I think to have already seen him mention something similar in the past), and can definitely works. By the way one thing is the theory and another the practice: with DoA4 this balance didn't work to a competitive level contrarily to what happened with the previous titles; the fame of the "more than sexy" DoAX2 was able to involve even the main one, and it's not rare to see young people/new gamers admit that they didn't know that DoA was a fighting game before the release of DoAD or DoA5.
Finally doesn't make to me much sense his distinction of the three series (NG, DOA and DOAX) as games for appealing respectively the requests of hardcore, "middle way" and casual players: I could understand if all of them were the same kind of game, but the three series are part of 3 genres completely different. I could care for one wishing to get a game of that kind casual or competitive, and didn't care at all for the others (for example I could wish for a competitive beat'em up and didn't care at all of an hack'n'slash or look for one very easy: in this case the DoA and NG as thought by Itagaki wouldn't be able to satisfy me, because before to look for a casual or hardcore game I could look to the kind of game). By the way I admit that I could have completely misunderstood his words about this point.
However I repeat that I'm glad to have heard his words on the DoA matter and I'm really curious to see if his Devil's Third will be able to improve from the demo version as Itagaki promised to do, really wishing that can be able to become a good and successful title able to bring back him in the gaming scene.
