Hideaki Itsuno

The next game in the series, DmC: Devil May Cry, was developed by British developer Ninja Theory; Itsuno was the supervising director on that project. When discussing this decision, Itsuno said: "With DmC this time, we wanted to avoid the problem that befalls some series where you keep making it with the same team, same hardware, and it tends to decrease and fans move away from it... We don’t want the series to die." The development team included over ninety members, several of whom were from Capcom. Alex Jones and Motohide Eshiro acted as producers, aiming to help Ninja Theory make DmC play like the previous Devil May Cry games. Itsuno's latest work, Devil May Cry 5, was released in 2019.

Initially, Dragon's Dogma was intended to be a Western fantasy game. In March 2012, Itsuno said he hoped the game would sell 10 million copies worldwide and one million in Japan. It was successful upon release, prompting Capcom to begin development on a sequel. Itsuno reports that the team was only able to accomplish 60-70% of what they had wanted to in the first game, and hope to include those ideas in the sequel.

In 2012, Itsuno hinted that the Rival Schools and Capcom vs. SNK series may see a revival. The former series was once again hinted in the next year alongside the possibility of a new Devil May Cry entry. Itsuno has also expressed interest in developing a fighting game that would recreate the influence Street Fighter II had on the genre.

Itsuno later directed Dragon's Dogma. During the press conference at Capcom's Captivate event in 2011, he stated that Dragon's Dogma was a game he had been dreaming of making since his school days; it was finally a project he could realize now due to advancing technology. At the time of the press conference, he had been directing a staff of 150 people at Capcom Japan for three years of concept and project development.

Itsuno returned to direct Devil May Cry 4. He stated that the visual design sought to deliver a satisfying sensation of floating in the air, and that the actions of Nero's Devil Bringer could not be done on contemporary generation consoles, necessitating a new generation of consoles such as the PlayStation 3. Devil May Cry 4 (2008) was met with both commercial and critical success.

Hideaki Itsuno's earliest work with Capcom was in 1995, where he worked on Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dream as a designer. He would go on to help develop many other fighting games throughout the 90's, such as Star Gladiator - Episode 1: Final Crusade, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter III, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Rival Schools: United By Fate, Power Stone, One Piece Mansion, Darkstalkers and Capcom vs SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001, the latter four where he served as director.

Hideaki Itsuno (伊津野 英昭 , Itsuno Hideaki) (born April 7, 1971) is a Japanese video game director and video game designer. He has been employed by Capcom for most of his career. He is best known as the director of the Power Stone, Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma series. He was also behind many of Capcom's popular fighting game series such as Darkstalkers, Street Fighter Alpha, Capcom vs SNK, Street Fighter III and Rival Schools.