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Kresnik258
Member
They are? I thought retailers manage to restock a while ago.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
You joke but I might actually want this
Saving their customers from buying a console that will be obsolete in March - based Nintendo.
Do you think I ever joke? I'm a very serious person.
Finally the Persona x Splatoon everyone was waiting for, this way which one sell better will not matter since they will be in the same game.
2.5M LTD seems like a reasonable target, 500k for Persona, 2M for Splatoon
>80%
Every game released in Japan has 3-4 days of sales in their first week, nothing unusual for P5.
10 million worldwide with the help of the Lady Gaga theme song.
I'd argue doubling down on cheap ports and remasters (rather than new AAA games) is more a sign that Capcom's deprioritized the west than anything. That they have more upcoming new titles for 3DS than PS4 & Xbox One is telling.
I'd be completely into this and I yet hate shooters. Sounds like a hit already!
Are they? Just this year Capcom has released SFV, RE:UC and Sengoku Basara and will release DR4 and RE7 in the future. For the 3DS, Capcom will have MHS, an untitled MH, DGS2 and whatever that other 3ds game is. SFV and DR4 will more than likely outsell everything they'll have on the 3ds bar a proper MH and then RE7 will outsell that unless it turns out to be a major disaster.
Kresnik258
Member
Is that not more proof that they're deprioritizing the west lol? An IP that hasn't made it over here in years?
The west hasn't had a basara since 2010. If that poster with his deprioritizing statement goes all the way back to 2010(when Capcom had all those western made titles in production) then sure but I'm pretty confident he means in recent years.
1st Course
Member
They also have in development for the PS4:
Deep Down
Monster Hunter Frontier Z
Resident Evil 2 Remake
I said upcoming. You have to go back to last FY to include SFV, which was subsidized by Sony to even happen anyway. You're also leaving out AA6 then if you're looking backwards towards earlier in the year.
Capcom's expecting only 4m for RE7, which is less than MH4 and MH4U each sold. Like I said RE6 was a turning point for the company. And the other 3DS game is Megami Meguri.
Vaporware
Port
Remake
For the Fiscal year. MH4 and MH4U's 4.1 m sales are their LTD sales.
Also, a previous poster corrected me and we still have DD and RE2:R(which is a full on remake so I don't care if you think don't it doesn't count) so that's 4 vs 3, 3 vs 3 if you want to discount DD as vapourware and they still all have more worldwide appeal.
These days Nippon Ichi does. If not for NISA, the entire company would probably be out of business.
I agree that NISA makes most of the money, I think it was 52% according to the last finance report, but that's still weird, since what's actually making money for NIS in Japan are PlayStation Vita titles that are far from being a priority to NISA.
Usually there is big difference between what Capcom expects and what actually happens and RE7 looks like a title that 4m is the very upper limit of what Capcom can ship this FY.
For previous FY MHX far exceeded expectations and SFV far underperformed.
i thought after Splatoon bundle in July things were normalized. All the other models are out of stock but amazon has the bundle.
I was speaking towards games with some semblance of a release timeframe. I wasn't even considering the mystery MH (which is undoubtedly on at least 3DS) just MH Stories, Megami Meguri and DGS2 versus RE7 and Dead Rising 4. RER2 could happen on PS5 for all we know given how prematurely it was announced (before planning stage even) and DD is pretty obviously dead as we knew it. Capcom's shift away from the west coincides pretty directly with their shift out of AAA development and their future as a major worldwide publisher.
Going back I think a similar argument can be made for Konami as well. They're not a strong 3DS supporter by any means but they've also more or less abandoned PS/Xbox as well and prioritized the domestic mobile market above everything. Sega, Square Enix, Nintendo and Sony really strike me as the only Japanese publishers who you could make an argument for prioritizing the west over Japan, and even then I think it might not really apply for SE and Sega either unless you're looking exclusively through a console/PC lens.
Let's take a look at the titles in terms of sales potential.
DR4
DR4 will be released on 3 platforms this time albeit at different timings. The last one sold 2.1 m on PC/X1.
RE7
Despite the RE6 debacle, it somehow still manages to climb in numbers based on the Capcom rankings after all these years. I don't think RE7 will do as well as RE6 but it'll still do pretty well in general.
MH
A guaranteed 3m+++ seller.
MHS
DGS2
MM
MHS doesn't look like it's gonna do well based on pre-orders. DGS is a sequel to an spin-off that underperformed. MM looks niche as hell.
All in all, while the 3ds may have more games in terms of sheer numbers, Capcom's major breadwinner in Japan is MH. Overall, I'd say that they still heavily rely on the western market. Even MH is doing pretty respectable numbers there now. If you say that Capcom doesn't rely on the west as much as the other publishers then yes, I agree with that.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
Capcom's major breadwinner in general on any platform is Monster Hunter at this point. MH4+4U+Gen has brought in well over 10m sales in the past several years, it's literally what's been keeping the company afloat. And that's not even factoring continued stable revenue from Frontier, mobile hits like Explore or spinoffs like Nikki DX.
It's really not a matter of relying on return from regions though, it's about investment in them. Properties that rely on the west or western platforms are generally being defunded and deproritized (Resident Evil, Dragon's Dogma, etc) or else seeking 1st party subsidizing (Street Fighter, Dead Rising) while properties that rely on the domestic market are generally seeing stable or growing focus and investment (Monster Hunter, Ace Attorney, etc). I think there's a strong argument here that Capcom isn't prioritizing the west first anymore.
From what I see, they aren't likely. On the way to work there are a couple of Yodobashi's and Bics but only time I've seen them having stock is when limited edition gets released, and stock is very short-lived, except for Splatoon edition. However Nintendo is controlling the stock flow so there's little retailers can do.
Since we're on the topic, I did a large write-up of Capcom's annual report, but I figured I'd dump it here as well since presumably this thread has most of the people who would actually be interested in the business implications of it: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1283303
From their annual report: http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/annual/2016/annual_2016_01.pdf
General:
- Capcom has added 500 new development staff since 2012, and intends to add 500 more by 2020. These are largely college grads added annually, so there's a bit of a warm up time as they learn the ropes, but we should see a major spike in their output soon.
- I covered this in the previous thread, but they're also trying to hire more diverse staff, and now have 20% women in development and an unspecified increase in international staff.
- Capcom notes "We cannot ignore genres such as shooting and strategy games with massive numbers of players when considering Consumer, Online and eSports market growth potential." I'm going to make a separate thread about this one so people can have fun speculating, but I'll include it here for posterity as well.
- Capcom talks about how they intend to dig up some of their old IPs and either reboot or re-imagine them. I'm putting this here since the later parts of this make it clear this is a split idea between both console and mobile.
- There's a lot in here about how they like to make multimedia stuff these day.
- This is a side note, but they mention the video game market (all platforms) is expected to exceed $103.2 billion in 2018, up from $68.8 billion in 2014.
- Here is what Capcom's income breakdown currently looks like by product category. To note, traditional PC games (like Dragon's Dogma on Steam) count in the console/download segment (indicated by the controller icon), whereas things like Dragon's Dogma Online are part of the PC Online segment (indicated by the monitor):
Capcom's Divisional Structure:
- "Division 1 creates global contents including Resident Evil."
- "Division 2 works with online games such as Street Fighter."
- "Division 3 develops contents for Japan, including Monster Hunter and Sengoku BASARA."
Console/Traditional PC Specific:
- Capcom's console game division has 1500 staff.
- 20% of Capcom's console game division is working on new IP.
- Capcom is making a third try at putting games on a 2.5 year development cycle. This time, their approach consists of having way more staff, and having a rather complex looking development structure where everyone's time is utilized more productively across various projects.
- Capcom is putting a big focus into both VR and eSports as corporate objectives. Resident Evil 7 and Street Fighter V are their two current examples for those categories, with more coming in the future.
- Capcom's current digital sales ratio is 29.8% (projected) for this year. They would like to reach 50%+ in the medium term (generally this means 3-5 years).
- Capcom hopes to make catalog sales (sales of games released in previous fiscal years) an increasingly large part of their business through long tail product support. Capcom's catalog game sales have increased from 3.9 million in 2013 to 7 million in 2016, and this represents 46.7% of their income, so the plan seems to be working.
- As might be obvious from the above notes, part of Capcom's plan to increase digital revenue and tail end sales is to run many of their games as services with a variety of post launch cosmetics, add-on content, etc. If you look at Street Fighter V, you'll get the idea. I imagine Resident Evil 7 has a season pass as well, but we'll see.
- Capcom notes "If we are unable to continue generating content qualitatively equal to global AAA titles, Capcom has no future as a company specializing in games."
Mobile/PC Online Specific:
- Capcom's mobile/PC Online department has 500 staff.
- Capcom has finished merging their mobile departments, and now their mobile games will overwhelmingly consist of games using Capcom's internal IP that target a global audience.
- The first four games made entirely under this new strategy will release next fiscal year (starting April 2017) and consist of games based on Mega Man, Monster Hunter, and Sengoku Basara. Presumably one of these brands has multiple titles. I once reported these are releasing this fiscal year. My apologies, I didn't quite understand the timeframe from the report from 3-6 months ago.
- Capcom considers Monster Hunter Explore to be a hit, but their other recent mobile games to not be hits. They are dedicated to remedying this situation.
- Toward this end, in addition to the above reforms, Capcom is looking to buy mobile developers to strengthen their mobile offerings.
- Capcom is also focusing a lot of effort into growing mobile expertise internally because they feel it's critical they have this knowledge given where the market is headed. Or, explained more easily, if they only partner with external developers, if those external developers go work with someone else instead, Capcom would be in bad shape if they didn't have internal mobile talent.
- There's a lot in here about how they intend to work with various Asian partners to expand their reach into the rest of Asia. Pretty much every Japanese third party is doing this these days.
Additional Notes:
- There's an analyst interview printed in here where an analyst asks good questions about everything Capcom is struggling with, and Capcom gives a bunch of not-amazing answers. It's kind of amazing. Of course, since this is Capcom's official report, the analyst gives a polite "Good job with your answers Capcom!" summary box, though does note that they should consider partnering with expert mobile studios to expand their mobile line-up more effectively.
- There's a bunch of developer interviews in here near the bottom. Most of them are flufff. However, in one of them, it's implied that Dragon's Dogma Online is seen as the sequel to Dragon's Dogma as done by Dragon's Dogma's development team, and they talk about their long term plans for the game, so I wouldn't hold my breath for Dragon's Dogma 2.
Capcom's new head of game development said:
Oh yeah, forgot to post this earlier, but Capcom announced a new mobile game today.
Introducing Otomon Drop: Monster Hunter Stories.
https://youtu.be/tPRsLrH73jw
So a mobile game to promote an anime that promotes a game... we've come full-circle.
Also, fun fact: they have a collab. with Puzzle & Dragons X.
Introducing Otomon Drop: Monster Hunter Stories.
https://youtu.be/tPRsLrH73jw
So a mobile game to promote an anime that promotes a game... we've come full-circle.
Also, fun fact: they have a collab. with Puzzle & Dragons X.
1st Course
Member
From the PDF:
"In terms of the proactive employment of non-Japanese citizens, Capcom is making efforts to strengthen overseas expansion capabilities including creating an English hiring website. We currently employ 91 foreigners (representing 4.0% of our employees). Going forward, we will create a system for improving motivation in an attempt to increase the ratio of foreign employees, including the support for career advancement and the promotion of non-Japanese citizens to management positions."
Clearly Capcom is deprioritizing the western market.
"In terms of the proactive employment of non-Japanese citizens, Capcom is making efforts to strengthen overseas expansion capabilities including creating an English hiring website. We currently employ 91 foreigners (representing 4.0% of our employees). Going forward, we will create a system for improving motivation in an attempt to increase the ratio of foreign employees, including the support for career advancement and the promotion of non-Japanese citizens to management positions."
Clearly Capcom is deprioritizing the western market.
PREDICTION LEAGUE OCTOBER 2016
Predict how much these titles will sell in the month (from Sep 26 to Oct 30):
[3DS] Monster Hunter Stories (23 days) - 120000
[WIU] Paper Mario: Color Splash (18 days) - 75000
[PS4] Battlefield 1 (13 days) - 250000
[3DS] Mario Party: Star Rush (11 days) - 80000
[PSV] Macross Delta Scramble (11 days) - 25000
[PS4 + PS3 + PSV] Berserk Musou (4 days) - 65000
[PS4 + PSV] Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (4 days) - 80000
[PS4 + PSV] World of Final Fantasy (4 days) - 60000
Predict how much these titles will sell in the month (from Sep 26 to Oct 30):
[3DS] Monster Hunter Stories (23 days) - 120000
[WIU] Paper Mario: Color Splash (18 days) - 75000
[PS4] Battlefield 1 (13 days) - 250000
[3DS] Mario Party: Star Rush (11 days) - 80000
[PSV] Macross Delta Scramble (11 days) - 25000
[PS4 + PS3 + PSV] Berserk Musou (4 days) - 65000
[PS4 + PSV] Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (4 days) - 80000
[PS4 + PSV] World of Final Fantasy (4 days) - 60000
Nintendo is shipping around 20k units a month, and it will be like that until March 31st. There is not too much in stock. What there are a lot, though, are used Wii U. The price entry is around 22.000yen so it's kinda cheap way to get the console. I guess the price barrier is doing wonders on the no-sales of Wii U, especially since the Splatoon bundle is almost the only one available.
22k yen isn't high. Just look at these websites, the big three for e-commerce in Japan:
Yahoo Auctions: http://category.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/list/2084310046/
Amazon Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B00D3GQC7S/
Rakuten Ichiba: http://search.rakuten.co.jp/search/mall/-/563546/?used=1
Down 22k yen for used, you won't find anything. It's most sort of, as you said, the low stock keeps the price up.
Yahoo Auctions: http://category.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/list/2084310046/
Amazon Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B00D3GQC7S/
Rakuten Ichiba: http://search.rakuten.co.jp/search/mall/-/563546/?used=1
Down 22k yen for used, you won't find anything. It's most sort of, as you said, the low stock keeps the price up.
You can look at what they promise, I'll look at what they've actually done. Only 4% of employees outside Japan doesn't exactly strike me as a company who favors the west over their domestic market either.
It's 91 foreign born employees working in Japan, not 91 foreign employees total at Capcom.
Capcom Vancouver itself is over 200 employees and appears to have 247 employees on LinkedIn with Beeline having 69.
That said, compared to the era when they were mass hiring Western studios to make games for them, they have less investment in foreign studios.
Capcom Vancouver itself is over 200 employees and appears to have 247 employees on LinkedIn with Beeline having 69.
That said, compared to the era when they were mass hiring Western studios to make games for them, they have less investment in foreign studios.
Oh, thanks for the clairification.
It's probably worth mentioning that not Japanese doesn't necessarily mean western.
I'd suspect most of them are from Asia, yes.
Dengeki is the most generous on Persona 5 sales, they say 300k just the PS4 version.
Terraria just 1.256 units, digital doesn't show a hot performance either.
Recore is not on the Dengeki chart, but given XB1 software sales it must have been around 1k.
DQVIII on 3DS is back on their chart too, 915k, should be above 950k with digital, it might just make it to 1m.
Also, more than 12m physical PS4 games have been sold in Japan. Wii U still below 11.5m.
By next week, software sales of PS4 in 2016 will already be higher than total software sales in 2015.
About 5m.
Terraria just 1.256 units, digital doesn't show a hot performance either.
Recore is not on the Dengeki chart, but given XB1 software sales it must have been around 1k.
DQVIII on 3DS is back on their chart too, 915k, should be above 950k with digital, it might just make it to 1m.
Also, more than 12m physical PS4 games have been sold in Japan. Wii U still below 11.5m.
By next week, software sales of PS4 in 2016 will already be higher than total software sales in 2015.
About 5m.
DriftingSpirit
Member
Let Capcom dream in peace!
P5 will sell over 1 million outside Japan?
Deep Down is still in development? It's buried pretty deep down by Capcom.
8 more Monster Hunter games for 3DS and mobile.
They're college grads that are hired about ~100-150 per year, so they're learning on a lot of these small projects you see like Project Palm and Megumi Meguri.
I imagine that Monster Hunter Stories tie-in mobile game was also newer staff given it's a match 3 title.
After that there's just a lot of people who are going to be doing art asset creation for something like Resident Evil 7. Resident Evil 6 had 150 Capcom staff and 450 contractors, so I imagine there's a much higher Capcom number involved now.
Why not?
I think, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a good example. Also, "niche"
Bandai Namco shipped over 1.1 million copies worldwide as for March 2014.
I don't have Japan LTD numbers, but according to Dengeki:
1 week http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32961277&postcount=370
2 week http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=33160454&postcount=311
and can't even find this game in top20 on 3rd week http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=33310646&postcount=518
A victory four or so years in the making, Puzzle & Dragons was finally forced out of the #2 Top Grossing monthly spot in Japan by Sony (Aniplex)'s Fate/Grand Order: https://www.appannie.com/indexes/all-stores/rank/overall/?month=2016-08-01&country=JP
This will probably help answer anyone who had lingering questions about why SCE opened a mobile gaming studio focused on Japan.
Toward Pokemon GO's success, it made more money in Japan this month than all of Square Enix's games combined, and Square Enix makes upwards of $540 million a year in mobile:
This will probably help answer anyone who had lingering questions about why SCE opened a mobile gaming studio focused on Japan.
Toward Pokemon GO's success, it made more money in Japan this month than all of Square Enix's games combined, and Square Enix makes upwards of $540 million a year in mobile:
Why not?
I think, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a good example. Also, "niche"JRPG.
Bandai Namco shipped over 1.1 million copies worldwide as for March 2014.
So Atlus will start giving Persona 5 for free like Ni no Kuni?
I wouldnt complain about that
test_account
XP-39C²
What is Sony's investment in Colopl Rune Story?
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Yes.