Capcom's profits plummet

By Fred Dutton Published 18 September, 2010

It's Dark Void and Bionic Commando's fault.

Capcom's annual net income is at its lowest since 2004, the publisher revealed today in its annual financial report.

Software sales for the year ending 31st March totaled ¥66,837 million, a 27.3 per cent year-on-year drop. Net income declined 73.1 per cent to ¥2,167 million.

The report blamed the poor performance on weak sales of Bionic Commando, Dark Void and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, though noted that Monster Hunter Tri, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition all performed well.

Of course, it's always darkest before the dawn and CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto believes 2011 will be a bumper year. "Capcom is now ready to get back on a growth trajectory once again," he said.

"During the next fiscal year, we will release several major titles in the home videogame market and focus management resources on the Online Games and Mobile Contents businesses. We will go back onto the offensive to achieve growth."

Capcom's next release will be Dead Rising 2 on 24th September for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It announced a number of new titles this week at the Tokyo Games Show, including DmC, Asura's Wrath and Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (38) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Ryze #1 1 year ago

    Oh well - better get working on Forgotten Worlds, UN Squadron and Strider to make up for that...
    Edited by 1 at 18/09/10 @ 09:11

  • PoundHound #2 1 year ago

    Dark Void - one of my guilty pleasures of the last year. :)

  • DAN.E.B #3 1 year ago

    Hmmmm

    below average games = below avarage sales
    who,d have thought it!

  • penhalion #4 1 year ago

    Has it still not occured to CapCom that the reason they are failing is because they are butchering all of their franchises? I mean you just have to look at the new Emo remake of Devil May Cry for frak sake!

    When the hell did they become so bloody clueless about what people liked in their old IP?

  • Alex_976 #5 1 year ago

    Wait until the lost planet 2 sales come through lol

  • uiruki #6 1 year ago

    Wonder who Inafune will blame for this. Maybe GRIN weren't western enough?

  • Silent-Hal #7 1 year ago

    I love this. I really do. After all that Inafune's been running his mouth about Japanese development, Capcom have been pretty damn incompetent this gen in terms of knowing what the western gamers that are apparently so important to them actually want. Whatever happened to Capcom games being the best around?

  • Phishfood #8 1 year ago

    I coulda told them not to make Dark Void from the outset. Can't believe enough people thought it was a good idea to spend so much money in to making it.

  • Gambit1977 #9 1 year ago

    No mention of Lost Planet 2...

  • coolbritannia #10 1 year ago

    Steel Battalion will save you ! Giant controller please, I have visions of controlling the mech looking like this: http://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=1ReHNAIR8...

  • ryanbreck #11 1 year ago

    I bought both Bionic Commando and Dark Void. While DV was certainly flawed, I feel it's not quite as bad as some think. BC I thought was very under-rated - great Mike Patton voicework, distinctive atmosphere and story. A sequel would have been much appreciated.

  • Haloboy #12 1 year ago

    The PC version of Lost Planet 2 is still yet to be released but I can't see that helping it much.

    And I bought Dark Void and found it a very fun and quirky little action shooter. Great game I thought, and somewhat unique too. It was certainly not anywhere near as poor as many would have you believe. You can pick the PC version up brand new for something like £3 now, bargain if you ask me as I paid £20 and enjoyed it a lot. Bionic Commando on the other hand is still selling for silly prices (£14 on Steam) and more on some other sites. Won't touch it till it drops below £10.




  • Concrete #13 1 year ago

    I too thought BC was underated.

    The first time I played it I got distracted by something else, but I went back to it six months later and blasted through it from scratch again and really enjoyed it.

  • kentmonkey #14 1 year ago

    I enjoyed Bionic Commando. The only people that didn't appear to enjoy it were those that were too hamfisted to work out the swining mechanic.

    It wasn't by any means a GOTY contender, but I enjoyed it.

  • RobotRocker #15 1 year ago

    Well that explains why they put Marvel Vs Capcom 3 in the Q1 Slot for them next year. That and Dead Rising 2 is going to bring in the mad cash.

    Also, agreeing with the sentiments that Bionic Commando was decent. It just went full on anime (Evangellion specifically) stupid near the end and people were expecting an open world game instead of the linear one they got.

  • Lunastra78 #16 1 year ago

    So we can expect a back-to-basics RE and Monster Hunter for PS3/360 in 2011? I might slip you some money then, Capcom.

  • SpaceMonkey77 #17 1 year ago

    @Ryze

    True dat. I'd love to see a remixed Area 88 (AKA UN Squadron) game. I did ask about this at Capcom Unity, and I was told there some licensing crap that stopped them going further to make more.

    Dark Void and Bionic Commando should have been better than they were. I think Capcom know they must be smart and have to use a higher degree of quality control, when outsourcing.

    The fruits of this are soon to play out, with Blue Castle now under their wing, as a nice incentive to sucess. Nothing for them to worry about. The upcoming games are going to rock them back into profit. easily. Case Zero was a nice XBLA start, which DR2 should follow.

    As for the new DMC game, personally this series has been getting stale. Change was needed. I find it hilarious that people are griping over Dante's emo hair, (excuse me, how long have we been drowned in androgenous anime hair, in our games, again?) than how the game will actually play. So long as the game is good, (I think Ninja Theory will be okay, with Capcom overseeing them and also both of them learning new things) I'll check it out.
    Edited by 1 at 18/09/10 @ 12:42

  • RobotRocker #18 1 year ago

    Dark Void and Bionic Commando should have been better than they were. I think Capcom know they must be smar tand have to use a higher degree of quality control, when outsourcing.

    Inafune pitched a fit over Bionic Commando because he felt Capcom Japan didn't care about it and didn't give Grin the time and resources to do it properly. Re-Armed was a massive success for them (It's still in the top 10 lifetime sales for both PSN and XBLA I believe) and he couldn't understand why they would not give resources to Grin when they could have had a hit with the next gen version on the back of Re-Armed. Grin were extremely passionate about the project too (Squeenix not paying Grin and terrible sales for Wanted and Terminator killed them before BC could though) but just didn't have enough supervision on it.

    Which is why Infune got extremely hands on with DR2. He didn't want another game with potential to get ruined by one or two decisions or lack of supervision.

  • Dylbot #19 1 year ago

    I feel sorry for Dark Void, personally. It was an average cover-based shooter, but the jetpack mechanic was absolutely brilliant. It had the makings to be one of the breakaway titles of this generation. Shame, really.

  • bad09 #20 1 year ago

    Dark Void was cool I quite enjoyed it, shame it bombed but you can see why it did.

  • Golgo #21 1 year ago

    capcom still make some of the best games but i've felt that for the last 3 or 4 years they've just been spreading themselves too thin. new and old IPs, retro remakes, many things multi platform, necessity of outsourcing, etc.

    quality has to suffer in that scenario.

  • Pirotic #22 1 year ago

    Bionic Commando had plenty of resources, the problem was Grin were using resources from once licence to finish games from 2 other licences, they got greedy and took on more than they could handle then got caught out trying to re-use code budget/code between projects.

  • Incarta #23 1 year ago

    Bad games in bad sales SHOCKER!

    I wish that was more sarcastic then it actually is *sigh*

  • Ryze #24 1 year ago

    Re-release Bionic commando with improvements to the criticized flaws, a little marketing to tell people what the fuss is about (I never owned a NES, and don't know who the guy is), and more importantly this year - PLAYSTATION MOVE SUPPORT.

  • Webbiker #25 1 year ago

    They managed to butcher MotoGP to oblivion too while they were at it.

  • drumbaby #26 1 year ago

    I'm sure Monster Hunter Frontier on Xbox 360 helped make up for the loss...oh, wait. :/

  • ChthonicEcho #27 1 year ago

    Capcom needs one or two great games, not a dozen mediocre ones.

  • jambii267 #28 1 year ago

    Dark Void and Bionic Commando, both good games which could have been great games if capcom had put any effort into them.

  • IamTheElderScrolls #29 1 year ago

    Not really a surprise in all honesty :(

  • VeggieWokker #30 1 year ago

    Monster Hunter did well, yay :).

  • gjgjg #31 1 year ago

    BC was one of my favourite born again franchises, could have used another 8m-1y in deveopment but still very enjoyable all round - especially when you could get a multiplayer game going.

  • metallicorphan #32 1 year ago

    i am sure Dead Rising Case Zero will help things,as well as the upcoming Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising Case West....eugh,i just had a thought,maybe these plummeting profits will make Capcom charge more than 400 points for Case West

  • xandaca #33 1 year ago

    Didn't Darkside Chronicles end up selling comfortably over 500k? For a short, on-rails spinoff, on a console where your player base had been alienated by false promises of releasing a proper game, I'd say those sales are pretty damn good.

  • itsfuzzy #34 1 year ago

    I think they are picking on the smallest kids in the playground here.
    I felt both games where better than average. Wait until Lost Planet 2 sales are in.
    The most broken game i have every played.

  • azz0rWuggawoo #35 1 year ago

    Releasing Resident Evil games on the Wii means death.

    They should have made it for Kinect and Move and then backported it to Wii.

  • FladgeMangle #36 1 year ago

    They should stop chasing the bandwagon and make proper use of their unique IPs.

    How about doing a proper Monster Hunter on PS3 and 360? At least they already have a suitable controller and between them they match the Wii user base. There's money in them hills, mountains and monster infested swamps.

  • RobotRocker #37 1 year ago

    Bionic Commando had plenty of resources, the problem was Grin were using resources from once licence to finish games from 2 other licences, they got greedy and took on more than they could handle then got caught out trying to re-use code budget/code between projects.

    If re-using assets and resources for projects is wrong, I dont think most developers would want to be right.

    Anyway, Inafune's point on Bionic Commando was that there wasn't enough supervision or QA on it from Capcom HQ in Japan. They gave them a small team of people who worked on Lost Planet to help design the bosses and had some meetings with Inafune but that's as far as it went at the time for Grin and Capcom USA. The heads of Capcom Japan then had the gall to whine to Inafune and blame Grin when the game flopped despite their lack of care about the game. They must have made up in some form or Inafune wanted them back though since Fatshark is mostly Ex-Grin and they are doing BC: Re-Armed 2.

  • Sevens #38 1 year ago

    Surely even more Inafune interviews, outsourcing and Westernization will turn that around in no time.