Bayonetta 2: Hideki Kamiya was joking

Hideki Kamiya was only joking when he said Bayonetta 2 was set to appear in a game magazine this week, Platinum Games producer Atsushi Inaba has insisted.

Yesterday Kamiya set Bayonetta fans' tongues wagging when he responded to a tweet asking for an update on the sequel.

"This week... in a game magazine," he said.

In response, Platinum chum Atsushi Inaba took to Twitter (via Andriasang) to say: "There is no such announcement!"

Inaba then warned that Kamiya's tweets tend to have jokes that push the limit, so followers should beware.

Sega has published each of Platinum's games: MadWorld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta and Vanquish. It will publish Anarchy Reigns next year.

But what about Bayonetta 2?

"I've got no comment on that," Sega West CEO Mike Hayes told Eurogamer in May.

In October 2010, ahead of the release of Vanquish, Inaba told Eurogamer in an interview the Japanese developer "would love" to make Bayonetta 2 and will do so "when the time is right".

Speculation was first sparked by yet another tweet from Kamiya. "Will there be a Bayonetta 2?" a fan asked the Devil May Cry director on Twitter. "I believe so," he replied.

"She'll be back if you believe so," he said to another follower.

"There is no concrete plan or schedule that we can talk about," Inaba told Eurogamer. "It's not like Kamiya said, 'Okay, we're going to make this.

"But Bayonetta is definitely a special IP for us. We loved creating that game. We think it was a really good game. We would love to make a sequel to it when the time is right. That's all we can say."

Bayonetta met a warm reception from hardcore gamers and critics, and respectable sales, when it was released late last year. Sega has also indicated it may be up for a sequel.

Simon Parkin awarded a 9/10 in Eurogamer's Bayonetta review.