The much anticipated Capcom title Dead Rising 2 wouldn’t be making an appearance at this years E3 because of the recent Swine Flu outbreak in Osaka, Japan.

“Our Capcom guys are not coming to E3 because of the Japanese government restrictions,” said Capcom’s Chris Kramer, Senior Director of Communications and Community, to kotaku. “The company is taking the advisory very seriously.”

According to Kotaku, Kramer said the company, which is headquartered in Osaka, laid in a supply of surgical masks and hand sanitizers a month or so ago, to try and cut down on possible illness in the company. However, Japan currently advises its citizens to restrict international travel, but people can still travel if they want to. The country has closed more than 4,400 schools, colleges and kindergartens for the week. The first case of the flu in the country was reported in Osaka.

While Dead Rising 2 will no longer be at the show, all of Capcom’s other expected video games will be there, Kramer said. The decision to not show Dead Rising 2 was driven by the fact that Capcom’s Keiji Inafune and other developers based in Japan will not be making the trip.

“Dead Rising 2 is the only game we won’t be able to showcase at E3, because it’s at an early stage of development and the team is not comfortable having anyone else demo the code,” Kramer continued.

Besides Capcom recently revealing heavy hitter such as Dead Rising 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and Lost Planet 2, it seems that Capcom is planning two more power hitters to announce at this years E3. 

“You think we have great titles now? Wait ’til we announce two more at E3!,” Capcom revealed via its Twitter accout.

Two titles?!?!? Wow they really do have this generation down to the tea, but what titles do they plan to reveal?

However, GameZine.co.uk has been told that one of the titles will surprise you, and the other we’ll all see coming. Let the speculation begin. 

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.”

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.

In the shadow of the Lost Planet sequel announcement, Capcoms exec Keiji Inafune also mentioned to Famitsu that they are also currently working on a Dead Rising sequel.

According to Inafune, “We’re finally putting out new Dead Rising and Lost Planet games! As a main principle we’re thinking about multi-platform, and expanding upon both slightly from the Xbox 360 version.”

But, sadly, in has statements in that interview he didn’t go into details on if the Dead Rising sequel would Multiplatform. And if you don’t remember, in their shareholders it said that most of their games are going to be Multiplatform, but lets wait and see want the future holds.

[New Dead Rising And Lost Planet Mentioned, Might Be Multi-Platform via Kotaku]