It’s been five years since Devil May Cry 5. Given that the passage of time has been bizarrely warped since the start of the pandemic, it may surprise you to learn that it has now been five years since the most recent entry in the Devil May Cry series. Devil May Cry 5 launched on PS4, Xbox One, and PC all the way back in March 2019, and in the half-decade since, we haven’t heard a peep about Devil May Cry 6. A mobile game called Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat did come out earlier this year.
Games take longer than ever to make, so it isn’t that unusual for a sequel to take five years to arrive. For comparison, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order also launched in 2019, and its sequel didn’t arrive until 2023. Death Stranding debuted the same year, and its sequel isn’t due until 2025. The Outer Worlds had us inhaling canned goods for health boosts all fall long, and its sequel still has no release date in sight.
No, in a world where GTA 6 is set to launch 12 years after GTA 5, it isn’t all that unusual for a series to take a lengthy break between releases. Of course, there’s an obvious reason why Devil May Cry 6 may be on hold. Hideaki Itsuno has worked on the series since 2 — when he stepped in as a replacement director for the final six months of development — and was director on 3, 4, and 5. These days, he’s been pretty busy shipping Dragon’s Dogma 2.
That open-world epic finally came out last month (12 years after the original, if you’re counting). Devil May Cry is a popular series, but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a priority for Capcom as, say, Resident Evil, which continues chugging along with new remakes and releases every year or two. If Itsuno is too busy, it seems unlikely that a new DMC game would be made in-house. And, given that the last time Capcom let another studio handle this IP, the result was Ninja Theory’s fan-derided (though increasingly reclaimed) DmC: Devil May Cry, it seems unlikely anyone else will get their hands on Dante.
So, could we be looking at another five-year wait before Devil May Cry 6? If Capcom has been waiting until Itsuno finishes work on Dragon’s Dogma 2, that is a possibility. Even for a linear series with fairly short entries like Devil May Cry, four-plus year dev cycles are increasingly common. If you’re attempting to mainline the Devil May Cry series, most of the games clock in at around 11 hours long on HowLongToBeat.com, though the aggregation site estimates the first two games can be completed in five or six hours (a runtime that assumes you’re really, really good, given that the first game doesn’t let you save your progress mid-level).
But I find it more plausible that the game is already in some stage of development, with Itsuno in a more supervisory role for now. It isn’t unusual for game directors to have multiple irons in the fire, or to pick up someone else’s iron and finish getting it fiery. Think of Naoki Yoshida producing Final Fantasy 16 while directing Final Fantasy 14, or Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley taking over Uncharted 4 after Amy Hennig and Justin Richmond departed Naughty Dog. It happens, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s happening with Devil May Cry 6.
That may just be wishful thinking because I would really like to play DMC 6. But I assume Capcom would also really like to sell DMC 6, so maybe it’s not that wishful after all.
