Capcom Scaling Back Western Outsourcing for Game Development

As the Japanese video game market has declined in recent years, publishers like Capcom, Sega and Square Enix have found themselves focusing more and more on Western audiences. That doesn't always mean, however, that working with Western game development studios is the best direction to take for a project. Capcom said it discovered this while working on Bionic Commando, which was co-developed with Swedish developer Grin (which is now closed).

After launching last May, Bionic Commando sold a mere 27,000 units in the U.S. during its first month. Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto said in a recent Q&A session in Japan that his company will now look to refocus on internal Japanese development. 

"Our experience with Bionic Commando has demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new title to overseas companies," he said. "Nevertheless, we cannot develop a sufficient number of titles without using the resources of these companies. This is why we plan to continue using these alliances."

"We are considering ways to separate the roles of activities in Japan and overseas. We plan to develop new titles primarily in Japan. Overseas companies may be used mostly to develop titles for existing game series with well-established characters and universal themes. Overseas companies will also handle certain parts and/or lineups of such games."

It's worth noting that this is exactly what Capcom is doing for Dead Rising 2. Since the franchise is already established, the publisher is letting Blue Castle Games (which previously developed The Bigs for 2K Sports) head development on the sequel.

While we understand Capcom's frustrations, we'd also caution the publisher to reconsider this approach. Bionic Commando didn't turn out the way they wanted it to, but collaborating with Western studios we believe is a great way for Japanese developers to integrate fresh ideas into their projects. Using Western devs to simply churn out sequels based on established formulas is a waste of their talent and does not maximize their potential for innovation.

[Thanks to Kotaku]