Itagaki: Well you know, what you say about the characters not looking much different -- along the same lines, shouldn't they be ageing?! The DOA girls are completed, at least in the world of DOA. That is how they should look, and they shouldn't look any different. I am not going to add additional wrinkles or a freckle or anything like that just to show off the new power of the technology.

You know, when DOA3 was introduced and we showed the graphics to people, a lot of people criticised that they didn't look much different from, I guess, the Dreamcast version [of DOA2]. There was a lot of criticism on that, but then, when people actually played these characters, they realised right away how different these characters played. The same thing will happen with DOA4. For those who are critical or sceptical about the evolution of the DOA4 characters, once they get a chance to play, they will realise that I was right.

Looking ahead into the next generation of the industry, what aspects of gaming excite you the most?

Itagaki: Well of course the Xbox 360 is what I’m most excited about right now and am most interested in. That’s why I’m working on it! That was a very bad question to ask because the answer should have been very obvious. I only work on things that I am most excited about otherwise they don’t capture my attention.

In fact, I think you should call this the “Bad Question Interview” or else I won’t let you run it on your website!