Capcom profits up despite low BC sales

By Robert Purchese Published 31 July, 2009

Monster Hunter also "weak" in West.

Capcom is celebrating record summer profits for the three months ended 30th June, with profits at $38.4m - a 23 per cent increase on the same period last year.

Resident Evil 5 broke records to ship 5m units around the world, and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite rampaged to ship 3.5m units in Japan alone. Wii-exclusive Monster Hunter Tri has been pre-ordered 1m times already, and prepares for a gigantic Japanese launch tomorrow.

Capcom also singled out Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Sengoku Basara Battle Heroes as strong sellers.

But not all games met expectations. Capcom said Bionic Commando "underperformed" with 550,000 units sold, and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite "performed weakly" overseas despite a hefty marketing push.

Capcom expects Lost Planet 2 to pick-up the baton from here and sell around 2.7m units. The company is also predicting a healthy return on superb XBLA and PSN fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom 2 over the coming months.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Gearskin #1 3 years ago

    Shame about Monster Hunter. It's just too freakin' nails for most people. Even me. And I like the thing.

    This better not affect the release of Monster Hunter Tri in the West though. I so want that game!

  • penhalion #2 3 years ago

    Well done CapCom. Especially as, after RE5, It's the first RE I couldn't be arsed to complete due to the controls and gameplay. I know I'm not touching another RE game until the controls and gameplay are brought upto date. These profits may need to last you a bloody long time!

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #3 3 years ago

    Just stick to Retro Megaman XBLA/PSN/Wii games - cheap to make and still damn popular.... Oh and throw in another Onimusha and DMC with Trish and Lady playerable, THOSE will sell :)

  • MORZTAN #4 3 years ago

    @ penhalion

    Appart from strafing, you can make the controls the same as in Gears of War. Is that a problem?

  • Meho #5 3 years ago

    "and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite "performed weakly" overseas despite a hefty marketing push."

    Er... could it be because it is essentially the exact same game Monster Hunter Freedom 2 was with some (welcome, too) added functionality? I bet most of the MHF2 owning crowd never completed that game so buying another game that is set in the same geography with same monsters just so you can take the cats to combat doesn't sound too appealing to them. I know I haven't bought Unite yet and am waiting for my stupidity to finally kick in and force me to buy it despite my better judgement.

  • mingster #6 3 years ago

    I soooo want MH3.

  • Chazmeister #7 3 years ago

    Now that we gamers in the west have a large selection of games from western developers to choose from, and indeed in the case of the 360, a western centric developed console. It is just starting to show the large disparity there is between Japanese and western tastes. Now that there is more choice for console gamers, the once mighty Japanese publishers are rapidly loosing their strangle hold on the world wide games market.

    Just as well as far as I'm concerned too, as the recent crop of big Japanese titles is showing just how stale and stuck in the mud their developers have become.

  • Darren #8 3 years ago

    No doubt the poor console sales of Bionic Commando are the reason for the disappointing no-frills PC port which promised DirectX 10 enhancements that utterly failed to appear in the retail game despite the developers promising it and numerous websites, including NVIDIA, promoting it as a DX10 game! Even EG claimed it would support DX10. In fact the back of the damn box I have lists DirectX 10 enhancements as a feature but the game only supports DirectX 9! :o

    I suspect DX10 was dropped last minute in order to get the PC version out quickly and allow Capcom to cut their losses. The game isn't that great anyway but, personally, I'm getting tired of all these delayed, lazy and buggy console ports that have been appearing on the PC of late.

  • Keivz #9 3 years ago

    No mention of SFIV? Though I remain split on BC, I may end up buying every PC game capcom has released in '09 this year.

  • Ryze #10 3 years ago

    They could have done with promoting Bionic Commando properly, if they wanted better sales. Most normal people aren't going to have a clue what it even is.

  • VMerken #11 3 years ago

    "Capcom also singled out Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Sengoku Basara Battle Heroes as strong sellers."

    And the former will sell strongest in february 2010, yay.