And the gaming industry takes another hit..(Capcom related)

[Living-In-Clip]

From Gamespot.com

According to Bloomberg Japan, Capcom has declared 19.5 billion yen ($163 million) in losses for its 2002 fiscal year. While its losses where originally estimated at 12.7 billion yen ($106 million), Capcom explained that its major titles sold below expectations. Biohazard 0 (Resident Evil 0) for the Nintendo GameCube was expected to sell 1.42 million copies but sold only 1.12 million. Devil May Cry 2 for the Sony PlayStation 2 sold 1.4 million copies instead of the expected 1.66 million. Clock Tower 3, which was also released for the PlayStation 2, sold 250,000 copies instead of the expected 450,000. Capcom released Chaos Legion (PS2) and P.N. 03 (GC) in March as part of an effort to meet its sales goals for the year, but the sales of the additional games did not offset its losses.


The company\'s losses were also attributed to the cancellation of projects that were not likely to be profitable. Capcom has terminated 18 games out of approximately 100 currently in development. This is the first time that Capcom has canceled nearly 20 percent of its projects. The development funds spent on these terminated projects will be declared as special losses, totaling 5 billion yen ($41 million). No specific games were revealed in the cancellation announcement.


Capcom vice president Heiji Oshima said that one of the reasons for the decline in sales was some of its titles simply didn\'t suit the market\'s demand. From now on, Capcom will strengthen its evaluation structure in order to better assess projects before they go into development. Capcom will also begin to frequently evaluate games in the middle of their development and immediately cancel any projects that may not suit the interests of the market.


Oshima also said that Capcom currently does not have any plans to merge with another company, although he does not know about the future. Oshima believes that Capcom has enough competitive edge to survive on its own at the current time.

This is terrible news. Eighteen projects canceled? Are by chance any of these projects the one\'s announced last year? The massive NGC projects? And what other projects? I find it extremely depressing that we may miss out on some great games , due to lack of sales.

With that said - this is just further proof that the gaming industry has hit a slump and I don\'t mean just a regular down sale season. Every company is reporting losses and every company isn\'t sure what their future is goin\' to be. Mergers are happening and some companies are not openly speaking that they are unsure what their status will be a year from now.

On another note, this down slump is effecting us, the gamers even more. Capcom has been known to put out niche titles and now that will be gone. The article quotes them as saying that projects will be evaluated more often and ones that do not fit the interest of the current market, will be canceled. This means we may never see games like \'Viewful Joe\' or \'Killer 7\'.

Also of interest is how bad performance was on games like Resident Evil 0, Devil May Cry 2 and even Clocktower 3. While no one expected Clocktower 3 to be a blockbuster, the other two should of been sure fire sellers  , espically DMC2 with the PS2 installed base.


Note: I did not post this in the Debate or Discussion section - as I don\'t want to have to deal with people goin\' "I told you so!" and throwing insults. News like this is serious. When companies as large and popular as Capcom start taking hits (along with Namco  / Sega and others) this large, then there is something wrong with the industry.

Any thoughts ? Why is this down slump lasting so long? Will it recover? How is the industry goin\' to fare?

yeah, it does suck that they have canned so many games.... and yeah i agree dmc2 (hough not played it, but from what i have heard) sucks, and some of there other sequels, i hope it doest last long, i like capcom.. and most of there games

DMC2 should have sold a lot less:mad:

As for Chaos Legion they havent advertised it much.

:rolleyes:  Ugh.. I think you\'re overreacting a bit here. Just like Square, Cacom will bounce back, surely. Don\'t forget E3 is just
around, that\'ll emit a spark the industry needs. Specifically, imo
Capcom hurt themselves by the NGC exclusivity which didn\'t pay
em off as well as they thought. The sales numbers are the
hard cold facts.

[Bobs_Hardware]

I knew you were going to have a heart attack.

[Kurt Angle]

It is their own fault, DMC2 was crap and deserved to have poor sales.

[Bobs_Hardware]

Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
From Gamespot.com

With that said - this is just further proof that the gaming industry has hit a slump and I don\'t mean just a regular down sale season. Every company is reporting losses and every company isn\'t sure what their future is goin\' to be. Mergers are happening and some companies are not openly speaking that they are unsure what their status will be a year from now.

Any thoughts ? Why is this down slump lasting so long? Will it recover? How is the industry goin\' to fare?

To sum it up, though, I don\'t think it\'s a major slump in the market.  Hardware and software sales are at an all-time high, yet we seem to keep hearing about all these major Japanese companies are taking massive hits.  Why?  Because Japanese developers are losing the sway they had in the 8/16 and even 32 bit generations.  American (and European) developers are starting to have major impact on the markets and the market is changing accordingly.

Unfortunate for those of us who have a penchant for Japanese styled games.  Though, the projects couldn\'t have been too promising for them to be cancelled.  If they were expected to be major sellers, I doubt they would have been cancelled.  Such as the NGC 5.

[Living-In-Clip]

I think Kop and Unicorn miss the point. Just because it is a "bad game" doesn\'t equal bad sales, espically when you take in account that the previous game in the series was a "Greatest Hit" and a critical claim.

And Bobo - I still have yet to see one of those great American games you mention. And the American that are being somewhat succesful, seem to be limited by the genre they are doin\' (FPS mostly).


{*...Waits for someone to scream "Bungie" and "Retro"..* }

L-I-C I said that because I hated it.I am very disappointed.I am mad at Capcom for ruining a game with potential.They harried it up because they knew it would sell well after the first game\'s success.I wished it sold bad so they would get their lesson:(

Bad CAPCOM.BAAAAAAAAD!!!:mad:

Fingers crossed for a better DMC3.

[Bobs_Hardware]

Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
I think Kop and Unicorn miss the point. Just because it is a "bad game" doesn\'t equal bad sales, espically when you take in account that the previous game in the series was a "Greatest Hit" and a critical claim.

And Bobo - I still have yet to see one of those great American games you mention. And the American that are being somewhat succesful, seem to be limited by the genre they are doin\' (FPS mostly).


{*...Waits for someone to scream "Bungie" and "Retro"..* }

I didn\'t mention any great American games.  I\'m saying that American (and European) developers are starting to catch up with the Japanese developement community as far as importance and popularity is concerned, and as such the Japanese development community it taking a hit.

yea, i meant i didnt like how they rushed it, and put out a half assed game which, there fore didnt sell as much.. and im more concerened with games not getting released, maybe they should plan them from the beginning a lot more better, rather than spending millions, they decciding its not good, or having to spend more to change it, into a half decent game

[Living-In-Clip]

The game being bad probably had nothing to do with sales. How many crap sequels sell, durin\' a normal year? Too many. Espically the first sequel to a series - that is the one where everyone learns they are being "screwed". It isn\'t until the third or fourth that sales slump off.

By all means, DMC2 should of sold like hotcakes. It didn\'t, due to the fact the industry is in a slump.

Unless I\'m reading this wrong, they didn\'t actually lose money last year.  They just didn\'t earn as much as they had hoped for.  Selling 1.4 million copies of a crappy sequel is by no means a loss.

[Jumpman]

This means we may never see games like \'Viewful Joe\' or \'Killer 7\'.

If you take away my Killer 7 you might as well as take away my air.

Other than that, good to see so many crappy games with no hope of selling get cancelled.

[Bobs_Hardware]

MagicBox recently reported a rumor stating that the Online Tekki game was one of the games cancelled.

It was a sure fire loss anyways, no big deal.