Yet for an indie game, with SO much money, they really should have delivered something spectacular
What if the developer of Dust got his hands on millions...
Well, let's wait and see how the Symphony of the Night (forgot name of game) sequel turns out.

No, that's what I'm saying: money is not a guarantee for quality.
One guy with $40K CAN make a game that's much better than a studio with $4M.
I've played plenty of games costing dozens of millions of dollars that were absolute junk.

I know what you mean, but in principle, you would think more money should translate to a better game. At least where the concept is not all about graphics/movies but about delivering "fun". If someone said "hey, we have $50,000 and we're going to make the best game possible" vs someone that said "hey, we have $5 million and we're going to make the best game possible" which would you expect to be better? All things being equal, would bet my money on the $5 million since you can do so much more. Clearly though, it's not just money that counts.

Such truth has a razor's edge.

I think for the amount of talent AND money involved, I think it's fair to say Mighty No. 9 severely underperformed.

The greatest trick Inafune ever pulled was convincing people he had talent.

He doesn't.

In the words of Kamiya: He's a businessman, not a creator.
Look at the list of games he's been involved in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiji_Inafune#Gameography

He's been a character designer on most of the old games, and an (executive) producer on most of the newer ones, and I can tell you that a Producer has very little to do with how good the game is (at Japanese video game companies at least).
It's the game designers and directors that make the game; the producer takes care of schedules and money flow, etc. He's had his name attached to a lot of fantastic games, but he's had hardly any influence on any of them.

Now that he's left Capcom, it's becoming painfully obvious he doesn't know how to make good games.

OK, looking at that list, I would think that Inafune had a LOT of talent! He's been involved with amazing games, not the least of which is Dragon's Dogma "Executive Producer (uncredited)"
For Mighty No 9 he's actually listed as "Concept" -I don't know what that means? Did he just come up with the idea and had others do the work?

That's what I said: the talent responsible for these games comes from the designers and directors, not the producer.

And I would say your description of his function for Mighty No.9 sounds correct.
I know he only lent his name to Re: Core and wasn't even involved in it.

I'm not saying any of the opinions above are wrong, but am I the only one that thinks these developers that strike out on their own end up falling short because they simply don't have the support structure they previously had at these larger companies? I mean money is obviously important but I think a lot of this has to do with what each individual environment offers.

I'd say that's a big part of it, yeah.
There's also the fact that they have to work with entirely new staff in a lot of cases, although I think Comcept has a lot of ex-Capcom employees.
I'm still curious to see how Igarashi is going to do with his Castlevania clone. It looks cool, but it also seems to be taking a much longer time than anticipated, which is usually a worrisome sign.

I'm not sure if you missed the previous post on the last page, but I posted about Bloodstained and trying not to be worried about it. Anyway, the game got delayed by a year because IGA wasn't happy with the results and he talked about bringing in a new team. With information like that it's hard not to be worried.

Still, I'm puzzled by this turn of events. I thought the demo showed promise.

This is what I meant when I referred to the "talent" behind MN9. There was a lot of talk around this when everyone and their mothers were backing it. I agree with you on Inafune, as much as I love his older character designs.