2009 wasn’t as fruitful for Capcom as it was for Activision. Despite the continuing success of the Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Street Fighter franchises, Capcom’s net income dropped a whopping 73% over the last 12 months, down to only 2,167 million yen.
Monster Hunter Tri for the Wi and Sengoku BASARA Battle Heroes for PSP all showed “healthy growth” since their releases in Japan over the past year. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth for the DS, and Resident Evil 5: Alternative/Gold Edition for PS3 and 360 also “performed satisfactory” and met Capcom’s sales expectations. However, the horrible sales of certain titles developed by Western studios, namely Bionic Commando and Dark Void, brought down the company’s bottom line and led to the company scaling back their strategy to outsource development to Western companies.
In addition, tentpole releases, like Lost Planet 2 and Super Street Fighter IV were pushed back into the next fiscal year, depressing overall sales numbers of a bit. Since release, Super Street Fighter IV alone has already shipped 1 million copies, so sales should be showing an upturn. Lost Planet 2 is due for release on May 11, 2010 in North America and is currently receiving average reviews across the board with an overall Metascore of 75.
Capcom is making another large push with Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii. The title, while showing outstanding sales in Japan, has never met the same success in Western markets. Dead Rising 2, the last of the large titles from Western developers, is also slated for release this year. The company acknowledges that Western markets may in fact be the key to future success: “Since the video game industry is shrinking in Japan, we must focus on overseas operations where the market size is larger in order to realize our project sales growth. As part of the sales strategy for next year, we will offer a powerful product lineup that specifically targets overseas markets.”
