Haruhiro Tsujimoto, president and chief operating officer of Capcom, has revealed in light of the firm’s annual report that the industry giant is looking to trim development cycles and churn out sequels more frequently.
Major titles to be included in this new strategy include the likes of Resident Evil, Street Fighter and Monster Hunter. Capcom notes that typically a single game takes roughly 3-4 years to pump out, so the aim is to shorten this development time.
Said Tsujimoto: "We launch sales of popular series titles held by the company approximately every 2.5 years. This is because the development of a single major title usually requires 3-4 years.”
"In the event that there are few hits, it will be difficult to create a series title every year and earnings will be adversely impacted. For this reason, it is important either to maintain a large number of popular titles or shorten the sales cycle to ensure stable earnings.”
"Among the multitude of major titles held by Capcom – such as Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Lost Planet, Dead Rising and many others – we will promote shortening of the sales cycle in pursuit of further earnings stabilisation and growth."
The executive went on to say that teams working on “major titles” would be “limited” to 100 people, “with multiple sequel titles developed at the same time.”
He added that it will be “necessary to create a large-scale development structure for shortening the development process,” so the Japanese giant will “strengthen” in-house development by hiring an additional 1000 staff over 10 years, most of which will be graduates.”
"In addition, we will increase the number of titles released in a single year and expand earnings using a hybrid development model whereby the core portions of the project are developed in-house by Capcom and the process-work is outsourced to outside development companies," he explained.
MT Framework, the proprietary game engine developed by Capcom seen in the likes of Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet 2, is to feature heavily into the company’s future plans. 80 per cent of the developing process using MT Framework is common across PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, which “significantly reduces costs and shortens time to completion to one-third of the traditional time required for development.” Furthermore, the tech is now fully compatible with 3DS, Wii and iPhone.
Enhancing DLC is also of paramount importance to Capcom, which Tsujimoto explains “will captive fans until the release of a sequel, as we acquire revenue from the sales of additional items to maximise profits.”
“By introducing a system that enables users to play one another across the globe, and by continually introducing additional downloadable content (DLC), user playing time will increase, and we can acquire new users who cross over from package users while receiving additional revenue in the form of additional item purchases.”
Capcom has had a busy 2012 so far, with several major titles seeing release earlier in the year including fresh IP in the form of Dragon’s Dogma and Asura’s Wrath. Looking ahead to the future, Resident Evil 6 is due out in October, and Lost Planet 3 arrives in early 2013, marking a busy schedule for the company.