Tomonobu Itagaki was in prime form Wednesday afternoon. Tucked away in a small room within the Tecmo booth, Itagaki-san, his translator, and what seemed to be a member of his entourage, were laid back with some goodies for the press, some drinks, and a TV and DVD player to show off his latest works of art; Dead or Alive 4, and Ninja Gaiden: Black.

After a quick viewing of the Dead or Alive 4 trailer, Itagaki was ready and willing to answer our questions about the game. Standing at approximately 15% complete, there wasn't a great deal of info to be had, but we did as much digging as possible to uncover some details.

First and foremost, the game will heavily focus on online play like Dead or Alive Ultimate before it. If you've been playing DOAU recently, you know that quite a few player created clans have popped up. Itagaki has also noticed this, and clan support will be one of the new additions for Dead or Alive 4 online play. Few details are available on exactly how clans will be integrated, but expect something similar to the Halo 2 format with possibly custom logos, and some way to indicate which clan you are affiliated with while you play.

At the Microsoft pre-E3 press briefing it was confirmed that a spectator mode could be included in all Xbox 360 Live games. An example of 250,000 players watching a single Project Gotham Racing 3 race simply floored us. So of course, we had to ask Itagaki if something like this would be included in DOA4. He immediately reminded us that DOAU was the first and only Xbox Live title to support any kind of spectator mode with its virtual arcade setup for up to eight players. This feature will be expanded on with DOA4 to allow more people to watch matches while they wait for their turn to play.

However, taking this to a larger scale like the PGR3 example may not be in the cards. Itagaki said that it's certainly possible to do something like that, and technically very possible with a slight delay for the spectator, but he brought up a very good point. Why have 250,000 people watching a match when you can simply record the match and put it online? While Itagaki makes a good point, this does not rule out the possibility for massive amounts of players to watch a Dead or Alive 4 tournament match. With a larger scale official tournament already in the planning stages for DOA4 we'll just have to see how things pan out in the future.

Moving on from online features to characters, we asked about some of the new characters in Dead or Alive 4, and who would be returning from the existing cast. DOA fans who didn't see their favorite characters in the E3 trailer can rest easy tonight. Itagaki confirmed that every character who was playable in DOA3 will be included in DOA4. Some may not be playable in Story Mode, but every character will be available for online play. In addition, the new boss character, Alpha-152 (seen in the tube toward the end of the trailer), may also be playable. Currently, Alpha is a bit too over powered to put in standard online play, but if Team Ninja can tone her down a bit, she will be selectable just like Tengu in DOA Ultimate. This will bring the total number of playable characters in Dead or Alive 4 up to 20 or possibly 21 if Alpha-152 is playable.