It's odd but in one of the discussions on GT.com they were discussing the possibility that this reboot was not a choice that came from a need or even a desire fora reboot but rather an internal politics scenario that pushed capcom into it, mostly it was because it didn't need a reboot yet. The franchise was not doing poorly and it certainly wasn't an unpopular franchise. The thing is that Inafune pushed for a reboot, but, again, not because it needed it but because he had more faith in western gaming than Japanese, that led him to push Capcom to pursuit branching out their franchises. Without the influence of Inafune DmC might be left on it's own to be continued, mostly it's financial success since critical reception seems to no longer be enough.
I agree, I'm going to copy and paste my post that I put in the other sub-forum.
DMC4 was the best selling game in the franchise when it was released, but a lot of factors came into play.
Itsuno wanted to make his own series, Dragon's Dogma.
It is true that Capcom management surely wanted more sales, but their thinking was somewhat backwards. 2 million people bought DMC3 on the PS2, so they thought DMC4 would sell 4 million ( 2 on 360 and PS3 . Perhaps they didn't say this, but I'm sure they had some stupid idea in there to say "This is inadequate", as that is what they've been doing to constantly be losing their best developers.
Itsuno wanted to stop making DMC series and work on his own, which became Dragon's Dogma.
Keji Inafune became Capcom's general manger, and he saw bad habits. ( I get paid at the end of the week, so why try hard?) in Capcom Japan. He thinks western developers are more hungry and will try harder = he outsources IP's to be made by western developers. Some are successful ( Dead Rising 1 and 2, 2D Bionic Commando games ) and some flopped ( 3D Bionic Commando game and Dark Void ).
Keji also sees that DMC4 was not up to quality, as it was a rushed product (really the Capcom management wanted money NOW instead of taking time to make the game great in the first place). Game is rushed, 1st half stages are reused for 2nd half, filler dice game etc.
He sees Ninja Theory can do good writing because they hired contract movie-script writers for Heavenly Sword & Enslaved games, and green lights the project. They are hired to remake DMC.
Keji Inafune leaves Capcom.
Nobody at Capcom puts a leash on Ninja Theory, where Tameem Antoniades makes his dream game Heavenly Sword 2.0 instead of DMC 5.0. Once the game is practically done, Itsuno is sent to oversee the combat with duct tape and glue with the engine that already exists.
