The Future of Mega Man X

So with the last X game out of the way I'd thought I'd give some of my thoughts on the future of this series. Mega Man X is on hold right now according to Inafune but it's almost guaranteed that we'll see an X9 some day. Many fans think X9 should follow in Mega Man 9's footsteps and come back to the 16-bit era of the SNES days. I have to disagree and I don't think it's going to happen anyway. The X games have always been about the evolution of the series more than the roots of them. Mega Man X was the first on the SNES, the first to make it to a 32 bit system and the only ones to make it to the PS2 (not counting the collection). I think of X9 comes out, Capcom will push it for the PS3/Xbox 360 and I think they might put some real effort in those graphics this time.

Story wise X9 has to resolve the issues with Axl that X8 left, but after that the series has a lot of places to go, and Axl himself is likely to play a key role. Many speculate that Axl will go Maverick himself because of the purple glow, or he may gain some new ability from this, as in Command Mission his own copy chip is shown to be much stronger. He was also alluded to in ZX Advent by Inti Creates but they wrote it in as a potential red herring. I think though we might see Axl play a bigger role in the series.

Then again, X9 could easily bring back Sigma as well. Despite X8 practically promising he'll never come back, everything Lumine said could have just been bullshit all along from the Maverick Virus and he gets himself retconned in.

Another route the series can go is with the Elf Wars, the lead in to the Zero series. There's lots of potential to work with here, especially in exploiting X's Guardians from the Zero games which were fan favorites to begin with. I for one would definitely like to see them in more games.

Mega Man X has a definitive beginning with the start of the Maverick Wars and a definitive end with the death of X in Mega Man Zero 3, but everything in between is fair game for this series for now. Capcom has stated that if the fans want X9 they'll make it, and that could be coming sooner than later. So far though nothing new has surfaced about X9 in a long time, but I would expect that to change within a year or two.