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Capcom's 'Future is the PS3 and Xbox 360'

Posted January 6, 2010 by David Radd

Issues with sales of core Wii titles are usually talked about in the context of the U.S. market, but it isn't limited to North America. Director General of Capcom France Antoine Seux, while praising the sales of Resident Evil 5 as the best in the series history and Street Fighter IV as the biggest fighting game in years, was less enthusiastic about the latest Resident Evil title on Wii.

“As for Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, the absolute figures aren't too bad, but I'm not going to lie, they are below what we hoped. After three weeks, we sold a total of 16,000 copies,” said Seux to Gamekult [thanks GI.biz]. “One feels that there is a very clear problem with this style of game on the Wii, where gamers have obviously moved on. Two years ago, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles was a very, very big success on Wii, but we can see that the consumers on this console have become a mainstream audience. It is a disappointment.”

The interviewer remarked that he was surprised about that since Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition did so well, but Seux responded, “Resident Evil 4 on Wii worked well, but it released in June 2007, when it had little to compete with in the market! This year the Wii was a challenge with oversupplied consoles and a radically changing consumer market. We note that games for 'gamers' are selling less and less on the Wii, whether it was MadWorld or Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, The House of the Dead: Overkill ... the sales were not extraordinary, and compared to the 140,000 copies Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition sold at the time, it is not even close. We are clearly concerned about this.”

When asked if he thought it would be a trend that core games would be disaffected on Nintendo's console, Seux said, “Indeed, the Wii is becoming complex. What works great, and I rely on the GfK figures, the games are very heavily mainstream, like Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and to a lesser extent Just Dance and The Rabbids. These franchises are strongly supported, I'm certain, by massive advertising campaigns.”

“This is the year of the emergence of so-called new console generation," he continued. "The position of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the market feels pretty clear. Tthe Wii is still an important part of sales, but growth is on PS3 and Xbox 360. The DS is declining, for various reasons such as market saturation and piracy and for these same reasons, the PSP is dying. The Wii is very much a family console and tie-in rates are relatively low. So for Capcom, the future is the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.”

This comes on the heels of Sega of America studio director Constantine Hantzopoulos saying that the publisher is "probably not" doing more core titles for Wii.

David Radd has worked as a gaming journalist since 2004 at sites such as GamerFeed, Gigex and GameDaily Biz.