What do you know… According to EuroGamer, Keiji Inafune, Capcom R&D kingpin, has confirmed that Dead Rising 2 features multiplayer, despite rumors at GDC saying that it wouldn’t.

“We’re at a point in game history that you need to have some form of multiplayer component in a game,” Inafune told journalists at Captivate 09 in Monaco last week.

“Single-player alone is not going to cut it. So rest assured we are going to put multiplayer in the game, but I can’t go into specifics about what type of multiplayer as that directly relates to some of the game systems that we don’t want to talk about at this event. It will be online multiplayer, so keep that in mind.”

Any fan of the first Dead Rising would know that it was great, but not because of its controls, or even Otis. But, because it featured a huge zombie horde on-screen at the same time.

And following in the foot steps of the first game, the sequel promises to feature a even bigger zombie horde on-screen.

When speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Izmeth Siddeek, who is a developer from Blue Castle Games, revealed that, “Dead Rising 2′ deal[s] with the rendering of the greatest number of characters ever seen in a video game. Everything else needed to be subordinated to this requirement”.

Easily said, am I right? When he continue talking about the game, he revealed that they are “preparing to have as many as 6000 characters on the screen”.

[Dead Rising 2′ Is Supposed To Have Most Characters Ever… 6000? [GDC 2009] via MTV]

Remember back in 2006 when you first saw Dead Rising on the 360? Well, almost three years later it seems that the game is about to make an EPIC return because today Capcom announced its sequel, Dead Rising 2.

The game promises to ‘take the franchise to a new level of zombie-killing’ by featuring tens of thousands of zombies, in the all new gambling paradise of Fortune City, so it’s not in Vegas like previously though. The City will host new in-game objects that can be used as deadly weapons to stave off the zombie assault.

Dead Rising 2 is set several years after the infamous zombie invasion of Willamette. Unfortunately, the zombie virus was not contained at the conclusion of Dead Rising, spreading unchecked throughout the United States and Dead Rising 2 depicts a country where zombie outbreaks continue to strike.

Dead Rising 2 is being developed in partnership with up and coming Canadian developer Blue Castle Games. A number of members from the original Dead Rising team will be working alongside Blue Castle Games throughout the development process, including Capcom’s global head of research and development, Keiji Inafune, who as the game’s Producer will play an active role in the project.

The original Dead Rising was a solid Xbox 360 exclusive that kept gamers playing over and over again, but that was about it for the game title, until now. A source close to Canadian developer Blue Castle Games has told the guys over at Eurogamer that the studio is making a sequel to Dead Rising. Rumours that the Vancouver-based outfit was working on the zombie project first emerged last year, but neither the developer nor publisher Capcom has confirmed anything on the record.

The source said: “Everyone’s really excited; the team has obviously seen the rumours and it’s been hard to keep quiet, but they can’t wait to show off the game.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t quick to give any details on the title or when we’ll be likely to see it. Blue Castle has so far released two baseball titles all with 2K Games, including The Bigs, and the recently announced MLB Front Office Manager.

[Blue Castle making Dead Rising 2 via Eurogamer]