Another year, another deluge of business slideshow presentations throwing around phrases like "brand power" and "human capital." This recent integrated report from Capcom is one to make note of, though, if you fancy yourself a fan of the venerable studio—or at least a fan of Mega Man, Devil May Cry, or Ace Attorney. (Sorry, Demon's Crest guy. You'll have your day.)
Much of the report is spent on financial talk: Capcom boasts it's "achieved 12 consecutive years of increased operating profit" and "four decades of steady growth toward our goal of making the most entertaining games in the world." Still, it's determined a "need" to broaden its output, and has identified the three series I mentioned as high value and worth leveraging with new titles.
Specifically, the report includes a statement from Capcom COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto, as spotted by Mega Man news site Rockman Corner: "Capcom owns a wealth of globally popular brands, such as Mega Man, Devil May Cry, and Ace Attorney. We aim to expand our user base and improve our performance through new releases, remakes, and ports of titles in these series to new hardware. By enhancing brand power and cultivating loyal fan bases, we will grow these into core IPs." Example core IPs Tsujimoto gave were Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, and Street Fighter—the developer's biggest games by far.
These series aren't exactly dormant: Ace Attorney games and Mega Man spinoffs are still being squeezed into various retro collections, and a Devil May Cry mobile game released last year, which probably counts for something. Regardless, it's a far cry from the constant blockbuster releases enjoyed by Monster Hunter and Resident Evil.
This is more a declaration of intent than a specific announcement, and the use of terms like "core IP" comes off kind of buttoned-up and cynical (it is a financial report, after all), but I nonetheless find it decently tantalizing as an enjoyer of Mega Man games. Maybe all those Battle Network collections sold like gangbusters and we can finally bask in a glorious golden age of new real-time, grid-based deckbuilder JRPGs. If you can believe it, there aren't a ton of those.
