When it comes to action gaming, few titles have had as much influence as the Devil May Cry series. Many modern 3D games were created using Devil May Cry as a blue print for one or more of their elements, including Shinobi, Rygar, Blood Will Tell, God of War, Ninja Gaiden and many others. Because of its influence, the original game was used as a bar to measure other action games for the better part of the most recent generation of games.

Capcom, never ones to let a good franchise go to waste [Understatement of the year! - Ed.], have composed three sequels since the original game released in 2001. The latest game, Devil May Cry 4, is the first on the latest generation of consoles. It is also notably the first game in the series to release concurrently on more than one platform, a tactic that may help prove the game out as the most successful in the series yet.

We talked with Nique Fajors, Capcom's VP of Marketing, who did not break down into tears while talking about the game.

You look as if you've just been playing me from the beginning!
According to the NPD, Devil May Cry 4 occupied two slots in the top five games of February. The Xbox 360 version of the game was second for the month, only behind Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the PS3 version was fourth for the month overall and first on the platform. In total, Devil May Cry 4 sold over 528,000 units during the February period.

Perhaps one of the reasons the game sold quite well out of the gate was that it benefited from releasing during a less than busy period for the industry, allowing the game's release to receive more exclusive attention. "There are obvious reasons why a lot of high quality products launch [during the holidays], but if you look at the console side of things, 50% of the best selling products sold outside of Q4 and that increases to 60% for portable," said Fajors. "There's plenty of dough to be made and retailers ask us to have more materials year around. I'm not sure you'd sell that many more units in the October - November period. Plus, some markets end up getting flooded. Most retailers are not going to take four shooters, for instance, so it becomes difficult."

"The business is maturing and other times of the year are very strong," he added. "If you look at the Wii, which is bringing in new consumers, the holiday period is not critical at all considering their year-round sales. The challenges are not as much as they used to be and I think it's good all away around."

Dante vs. Nero in epic battle

Apparently, sidestepping the holiday madness is a strategy that Capcom believes in and has used before to great effect. Fajors cited Lost Planet as a recent example.

"Lost Planet was launched in a January window and did extremely well, so there's a lot of be said about post-holiday and summer releases. So I think it's a good window, absolutely," he continued. "If we were launching it in October, we would have held our own. But in terms of media attention, retail attention, we're in much better position where we ended up launching."

If that's how you see me, I think you'll blush a pretty pink when I kick your ass!
The Devil May Cry series has been built around the basis of "stylish-action" and Devil May Cry 4 is no different in that respect. While there's a new main protagonist in Nero, he still shoots and slashes things with style and grace. It follows a tried and true formula of impressive combos mixing firearms, swords and other special powers with deep mechanics and the ability to level up your powers as you progress.

While the action elements of Devil May Cry 4 are as good as the series has ever seen, the game also shares many of the flaws of its predecessors, including a fixed camera, frustrating jumping puzzles and level repetition. Still, the title received mostly very high marks from the enthusiast media, averaging around 85% on GameRankings.com and receiving a 9-out-of-10 from GameDaily.

"Though this isn't really an evolution for the Devil May Cry franchise (the game feels like a minor step up from DMC 3), part four is still the best one to date," reads Robert Workman's GameDaily review. "It's a magnificent action epic with twenty-plus stages of demon wear-and-tear, one that's worth going through multiple times just to re-experience it with the bad-ass Dante. Hidden secrets and story twists are worth finding as well, lending themselves greatly to the overall adventure. It'll satisfy you immensely – and leave you bugging Capcom for a fifth chapter. That much, we can definitely tell you."

You're Dante, right? Not a bad name.
The promotional effort behind Devil May Cry 4 has been a slowly building and concerted effort by Capcom. Media and fans were given hands on involvement with the game at E3, TGS, Leipzig and the Comic Con and the New York Anime show and then later with a demo via Xbox Live and the PlayStation network. Materials for the game were also released in a strategic manner, including a "love" trailer that Fajors said did well because it "attracted non-standard DMC gamers." The largest undertaking of the promotional campaign, claimed Fajors, was the online community site.

"To put it in simple terms, I think that as a company, there are still some major investments to come along," commented Fajors. "Community is everything, because if you can get people to self-select for you, that's the Holy Grail. You can use a TV budget as a fishhook to pull them along, but if you get people engaged and talking for your product, that's key. We have an image of the community that we want and the products that will support this community built on games. We think Capcom is uniquely suited to it, because it's about delivering high quality products to the market."

While another Devil May Cry title is very, very likely, one of the main tasks for Capcom going forward this year is Street Fighter IV. Fajors acknowledges that, saying that with the first teaser trailer for the game, "We had millions of people that came to the site. [A ton of] people have played the original Street Fighter II, be it on consoles or in the arcade. This is ours to screw up because the passion is there [with fans]."