On Capcom's publishing strategy

[icycalm]

Chaz Seydoux (aka chazumaru) is a cool French dude who used to post on the IC frontpage, mostly about doujin games. At some point he stopped posting and subsequently became "lost to time". Now, with the recent resurrection of the IC forums, he seems to be making a little comeback (confined to the forums, apparently -- at least for the time being), and it was there that I came across these two interesting posts by him (I've retained the orange font color because it's his trademark):

Well, Capcom is the only publisher who cleverly thought about how to approach PSP, Sony included (only SQEX might join Capcom if you consider that "stay the hell out of there until we know better" was an approach). Of course, it is mainly because Capcom was absolutely convinced PSP would be in the situation the DS is right now: replacing PS2 in the mainstream instead of merely following GBA as the new handheld. This is why Capcom thought about their PSP strategy much more carefully than how they thought out DS development (in which they are merely existing through their legacy of GBA successes, and now being very cautious about how to evolve from that situation).

It is pretty interesting because many Japanese companies thought:
1°) PSP would be a huge success
2°) they could make money in the US with the 360
But only Capcom actually went on to study how to approach these two markets cleverly, rather than just make the same old games and think everything will resolve itself magically. And as a result, only Capcom is actually finding a mainstream international success with 360, and only Capcom managed to sell a million seller on PSP in Japan.

Oh but I am pretty sure Capcom is kicking itself in the nuts for how they dealt with DS. What is commendable is that they did not go into panic mode and started releasing absurd "non gamer" titles simply because everyone was doing so (this is the part of the DS catalog which is really saturated right now). Still, simply look at the amazing expansion for Gyakuten Saiban, which is now able to pull 500k for a single episode, whereas the total sales for the whole GBA series were probably not much higher. Capcom only underestimated the potential of the system because they thought it would be the same audience as GBA, in a much disminished market because of PSP's humongous lead.

Even with hit or misses, the development costs of DS are so low and the market so big that some of their main competitors had great years (NBGI is probably baffled at the sales of Taiko no Tatsujin DS, Game Center CX and Nishimura Suspense, for instance). I mean, look at Level 5's incredible success with Layton. This is not Final Fantasy we are talking about.

Saying "the market is saturated" is also a convenient excuse for publishers who fail to understand how to adapt to the way the market evolved. There are too many games coming out, for sure. But if the market was really saturated, publishers would stop begging developers to make DS games for them. We are still in that situation because DS is such a low risk business compared to the other platforms (Wii included) and so many under-the-radar successes are bringing money home. The true failures are when publishers either try to reach the Touch Gen market without understanding what it is, or lose too much energy and money on a high budget project (only SQEX can afford to take such a risk). Someone at Capcom is currently smart enough to avoid doing both. But it does not mean they should not be much more involved on DS.

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopic.php?t=10037

[Recap]

Good old Chaz. It's an interesting dissertation though I fail to see how Capcom "is finding a mainstream international success with 360". Unless he's not counting Japan for some reason, that is.

[icycalm]

I think Dead Rising and Lost Planet sold well enough in the US? Those are probably the games he is referring to.

And yeah, naturally he is not counting Japan. Since Capcom is a Japanese company, 'international' in this context means outside Japan.

[Recap]

Oh. It doesn't work well, then. The word there would be "foreign". "International" does always imply "worldwide", no matter the context, you know.

[icycalm]

Yes, strictly speaking, of course you are right. It's just that when Americans say 'international' they mean "outside the US", and it seems that this usage of the word is becoming widespread (case in point: chazumaru using it in this sense even though he is French).

It's kind of arrogant and kind of dumb, but there you have it.