Capcom Outlines Plan to Improve on Last Year’s 73% Profit Loss

After a fairly dismal financial year, Capcom is being pro-active and outlining its plan to increase profitability this upcoming year. The company recently announced a 73% drop in profits from last year, with just $23.8 million along with a 27.3% drop in overall sales.

Capcom has a plan, however, (.pdf of the document here) and a part of it seems directed at increasing the number of titles they’ll be outputting: a whopping 75 titles. There’s also a focus on the Xbox and PS3 market, with the consoles getting 4 and 5 more games (respectively) than last year.  They’ll be hoping that their new titles such as Lost Planet 2, Dead Rising 2 and Marvel vs Capcom 3 can bring in some sales, with Dead Rising 2 pegged to sell three million units.

The report also documents the poor performances of games like Bionic Commando, which only mustered 700,000 units sold. The company also wants to outsource more of its production, probably in an effort to ensure games like Dead Rising 2 aren’t “too Japanese“ for western consumers. However, Bionic Commando was an outsourced game, as was Dark Void which also suffered low sales, so Capcom have said they will have a “more rigorous oversight” of development to ensure that low sales won’t happen again.

As for the new games, Lost Planet 2 looks decidedly mediocre for my tastes, similarly Mega Man Online (whatever it is) doesn’t particularly excite me. If Dead Rising 2 isn’t as fucking smash-the-controller irritating as the first one, then that could be potentially interesting. The idea of killing zombies in a casino sounds crazy fun, but the chances that this could be another “meh” game by an often “meh” publisher is a constant fear. Don’t kill my dreams Capcom, please.