KOEI stated in the announcement that "KOEI has been at the forefront of creating the most engaging action games, so with Fatal Inertia we’re now lending our action game talents to the racing genre to deliver an experience that is as fun as it is fast," said Senior Vice President of KOEI Corporation Amos Ip. "Armed with an eclectic variety of weapons and racing challenges, plus elegant and intuitive driver controls, Fatal Inertia is quite simply bringing high-speed fun and excitement back to the combat racing genre."

"By designing Fatal Inertia’s gameplay around a physics engine it not only allowed us to create a truly different driving model, but it also helped us create a set of dynamic weapons with multiple tactical applications," said Lead Game Designer Michael Bond. "We’ve based many of the game’s weapons on straightforward physical principles, and by doing so we’re giving players the freedom to come up with their own creative ways of using them- ways that even we are still discovering."

Fatal Inertia was set to be the debut title from KOEI’s Toronto-based studio KOEI Canada.