Shin Megami Tensei
Development of "Shin Megami Tensei IV" began around August 2009, after development had finished on ' for the Nintendo DS, and lasted for three and a half years. After listening to fan demand, Atlus decided to make a fourth numbered entry in the "Shin Megami Tensei" subseries, something not seen in Japan since the release of ' in 2003. The reason for the ten-year gap between "III" and "IV" was that the company had made other successful titles, and had not had the time to develop "Shin Megami Tensei IV" as well. It was planned from an early stage for "Shin Megami Tensei IV" to be on a portable platform for reasons of player convenience; it was originally planned to be developed for the Nintendo DS using the "Strange Journey" engine, but eventually development was moved to the Nintendo 3DS, which led to the decision to use a different engine. The development team, which was dubbed Team Maniacs, included both staff who had worked on previous "Shin Megami Tensei" titles and newer staff who had not. There were differences in thinking between the two, which led to conflicts. As an example of this, game director Kazuyuki Yamai said that some of the staff would be used to contemporary games featuring "sweet" female characters who "say nice things", and as a result would want to add that "sweetness" to "Shin Megami Tensei IV"; meanwhile, Yamai saw the series as having "bitter" content, and thought that it would not be possible to add "sweetness" to it. Additionally, the staff members had differing images of the meaning of "Shin Megami Tensei"; Yamai thought that the good points of each staff member's interpretation should go into the aspects of the game they were in charge of, while not deviating from the "bitterness".