Capcom's Profits Take a Downturn Despite Strong Performances From Resident Evil 6, DmC and Dragon's Dogma

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Richard Walker

Capcom has today reported that its profits are down for the last fiscal year, which is apparently in part down to the publisher's efforts to restructure. Despite strong performances from DmC, Resident Evil 6 and Dragon's Dogma, which Capcom notes sold better than expected, Capcom's profits have failed to live up to forecasts for the fiscal year.

Restructuring costs have had a detrimental effect on Capcom's profits, but it's a re-evaluation of games the publisher currently has in development that have skewed profit forecasts. Notably, Capcom is rethinking its overseas outsourcing strategies for its franchises in the future.

Capcom has stated that there has been a "decline in quality of titles outsourced to overseas developers," which could mean less franchises get farmed out to western developers going forward. Nonetheless, it's hoped that high-profile titles like Spark's Lost Planet 3 and Monster Hunter 4, as well as mobile and PC titles could aid in boosting Capcom's profits.

For the fiscal year ending March 31st, 2013, Capcom posted revenues of ¥94.1 billion ($951.7 million), which is actually an increase of 14.6% over last year. However, profits are at ¥3.0 billion ($30.1 million), which is down 55.8% year-over-year. Revenues of ¥97 billion ($981.3 million) are offset by Capcom's operating income of ¥12 billion ($121.4 million) for the year ending March 31st, 2014.

[Via Gamasutra]

Comments
63
  • Stop putting out crap games for existing franchises and maybe you'll make some money.
  • "decline in quality of titles outsourced to overseas developers," utter bullshit DmC was brilliant even if it was different from its younger brothers. If they want to blame ninja theory for DmC performing badly then they are truly deluded.
  • Maybe Capcom should focus more on pleasing their fans when making their games, so that they sell better, and not blow loads of their budget on advertising, RE6 was everywhere pretty much, it's just over kill and why allot of games have failed to meet their expectations, just because CoD can afford to do it, doesn't mean that all other games can afford to be everywhere.
  • DmC actually performed well? I hope not.
  • only got themselves to blame...
  • Not a surprise considering how many game companies are currently struggling. I personally enjoyed Capcom's releases in 2012 (and DMC to start 2013). Maybe if they could re-release Resident Evil 1-3 HD in a box set like fans have been asking for years now, they would see a higher profit margin.
  • Also all those costume packs for street fighter 4 plus sf4 then super then arcade i know sf4 was not this year plus maybe people were put off capcom for stuff like the character pack from sf x tekken capcom spent many months trying to better EA
  • Dragon's Dogma is a pretty good game, and I'm glad to see it be successful for Capcom. Hopefully they can start to focus on hardcore franchises, and keep long-time fans happy, rather than shoehorn in garbage features and ruin franchises (Resident Evil).
  • RE6 was crap and Capcom have to take the blame for that themselves, not ninja theory who put out a solid reboot. Dragons Dogma was surprisingly decent though.
  • @6, woah, woah, slow down my friendo, that'd make sense. Nice resi evil collections, mega man collections, gimme gimme, but it'd just make too much sense for capcom to do that, its easy money, but they're just not that bright anymore.
  • Bring back megaman, make a true dragon dogma sequel, and make resident evil survival horror again. These three things, among others, will bring back the fans you've neglected and perhaps help ya make money again........
  • Everyone has been losing profits. The high cost of development and advertising has put almost everyone in the red.
  • Hear is a hint to all your publishers and devs out there. Instead of of blowing money on advertising, how about you release a demo and let the game speak for itself. I for one cannot remember the last time I bought something because of an advert, sure the odd ad can help if you are releasing a small lesser known title, but these are not even the ones that are been advertised, they are advertising the ones that people already know exists, adverts are suppose to make people know your product is out there not be you r whole damn sales pitch.
  • Despite strong perfomances from DmC? It didn't do well at all. @11 You make it sound like they were marketing DD:DA as a sequel.
  • @11 Dragon's Dogma 2 would be amazing (been playing through DD:DA)
  • New industry business plan: Outsource a portion of your product, fail, blame the outsourcing, claim new knowledge, claim progress, deny accountability, take money, run.
  • @#14 Get your head out of your ass! DmC sold 1.1 million units in 2 months which is pretty good for a game that only really has niche appeal.
  • @17 If you think that's a strong performance, then who needs to get the head out of an ass? They even reduced sales expectations 3 (3!) times for the game. It released a few days earlier, in a month with no competition, and it still didn't perform well at all. That's a sign of failure if i'm not mistaken. It didn't even sell half of what DMC 4 did.
  • @18 1.1 mill is actually pretty good, they over shot it like Square Enix did with Tomb Raider, and 4 sold well because it released before this gen got killed by countless corridor shooter releases.
  • ive played re5 and 6 and know why they are losing money. its because they are producing pure garbage all day,every day.
  • @ 11 and 15, There is already a Dragon's Dogma sequel in the works, just so you know.
  • Ah well... Tower of Doom & Shadows over Mystara will rock the house soon enough!
  • they should make a new good resident evil game, like the old ones, with real scary things and stuff!
  • I really hope RE REVELATIONS sells better than RE6 in order to show Capcom what to do with their own franchies....love you guys
  • @15 was not my intention to make it sound like i thought it was, I'll need to watch my wording in the future. @21 that somehow slipped past my web of info, thanks for the heads up. Ot: Seriously though, why all the hate on Megaman by capcom lately
  • I want a new Dead Rising,hopefully 3 or 4 player co-op. It'd be better if they went back to the DR 1 formula, DR 2 and all it's spin-offs were a little bit weird.
  • We call that bad management.
  • Yes. The problem is 100% to do with outsourcing and not putting out terrible games and having a gouging philosophy on DLC.
  • Capcom are great at what they do when they just focus on making games and not milking things to death. Resident Evil, Lost Planet, Street Fighter, Marvel Vs Capcom, Resident Evil, Dragons Dogma, Devil May Cry etc all fantastic series in their own right and cover a broadside of different genres. The problems arise when they try and squeeze every penny out of us when we seem most keen of a series to the extent people feel over saturated, stop caring and eventually Capcom sees this and moves on as theyve done with Megaman. Hell they nearly did the very same thing with Streetfighter, they were proved wrong when SFIV revitalized the genre... only for them to release variants of the same game TWICE. Dead Rising 2 getting a sequel almost identical save for the main hero you play - madness and milking at its worst... its probably killed the series. For me with practically everything they are releasing its shown the devs are shit hot at their jobs be they eastern based or outsourced to dev teams here in the west - its the suits at capcom we have problems with because its THEM who are deciding on disc DLC was a great idea, them who are shifting genres of favoured series as they target non-fans of series like Resident Evil and its them who are wasting resources by constantly re-releasing older (some decades old) titles at high prices on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade.
  • capcom needs to bring back onimusha. I loved that series
  • If they only stopped canceling games of their mascot (wait, is Mega Man still Capcom's mascot?), karma would stop biting them in the butt or at least into their wallet (or whatever sounds better). That and they need to quit over-marketing stuff. Hell at this point the only series that they could over-market or at least come close to it (or at least market a series like they have been) is probably Mega Man and I think they're getting to the point where they can't. Not to mention Disc Locked Content instead of Downloadable Content.
  • @30 Onimusha was great but really strange, the second games Gogondantess being a memorable example! I watched his cutscenes on youtube the other day and it was as disturbing as ever!
  • Maybe uhhhh make Resident Evil not a shitty ass action game and go back to horror?
  • Translation: "We are horrible at budgeting, and our attempts to exploit our customers with every trick in the book failed, so let's blame the Westerners and throw the baby out with the bathwater." Hey, that excuse worked for SE, right? Oh wait, it didn't and they looked like clowns trying to point fingers. Lrn2budget publishers.
  • Well Ninja Theory did a great job Capcom, If you have someone to blame. Blame the RE 6 and SFXT foolish dlcs. You really made people angry. And yes there was tons of unnecessary outcry for DmC and once again there is none but you to blame after 5 years (I might be wrong),you are back with a reboot and no proper story ending of the original arc. They should have done 2 DMCs to save them from this misery. But no you people are fools. And yes Lost Planet 3 is going to be terrible (as much as I have seen).
  • maybe if capcom would take a serious look at their policies, they wouldn't be in such a tough spot. people don't want to be nickel and dimed for dlc. when (non-free) dlc gets released, people want legitimate content. this means not charging for game modes in res evil, and not charging for alternate colors in the fighting games. go back to making costumes unlockable in fighting games like they were 5 or 10 years ago. on the res evil front, instead of selling modes that nobody wants for a multiplayer that no one cares about, make some single player dlc that people actually want. (and of course, disc locked content has given people a pretty bad opinion of capcom, deservedly so)
  • I have over 120 xbox360 games, 3 are Capcom games. All 3 I regret buying. Make better games = more money!
  • @17 DmC has only sold just over 700,000 copies to date, so I don't know where you got that from... Here's a link to prove it: http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=Dmc
  • Well Capcom, Dragon's Dogma was good more like this please. Or better yet Monster Hunter on the xbox in english regions! Also hasn't Resident evil run its course yet?? REBOOT or give up.
  • How the hell is an $800million profit a bad thing? Fuck capitalism.
  • @18 it took DMC 4 4 years of being on sale to make those numbers @#38 1.1 million is the official word from Capcom of the games sales as of the end of the last fiscal year http://www.computerandvideogames.com/404912/resident-evil-6-dragons-dogma-dmc-sales-revealed/
  • i'm sorry but resident evil 6 and DmC did not sell well. Compare resi 6 and DmC to the sales of the older games and see the difference...
  • I don't hate Capcom. I just wish that they stop trying to be like everyone else and go back to being themselves. For starters, the DMC is a good but I do like my original more but then again, this is like a parallel version of the original so they can make a sequel to the new one and keep the original one going. next.. RE5 and RE6. I like the graphics and the gameplay but, when they said that they were bringing back the zombies... I thought they meant like the non-smart, mindless but violent zombies... let down for me plus, too many melee moves for everyone. They should've limited the melee attacks for Leon and Chris but gave all the melee moves to Jake, that would of made more sense. As for SF... they should've just put all the SF series charters in SF4, and SFxT, same thing, should had all Tekken and SF characters in the game. I would like the idea of having the old school RE1,2,3, Dead Aim and CV but, I would be pleased if it was remade with today's graphics with RE6 gameplay but with mindless violent zombies. I want my horror game back!! lol! also... have they forgotten about DarkStalkers, Rival School aka Project Justice and Megaman/Megaman X series?...... Oh yea, my opinion again but, having trial mode teaching people combos.. not good. To me, it kills the creativity of people using their brain and trying to makeup their own strategy and combos and it kills fairness for younger gamers as well. if I wanted that crap.. I'll go back play EX..
  • DMC is a dead series because no one cares anymore, not because the game was bad. Resident Evil just wasn't fun. Going horror is good way to lose even more sales. Only video game nerds want that. SF, well considering it's still the top fighting game I think they're fine.
  • To all the whingey haters. Why don't you club together and learn how to make a game, get funding for it, slog your guts out making it and then get it released, then deal with other whingey people saying what you have produced is crap.
  • Maybe if they stopped selling us 1/2 a game with the other half being disc locked content you have to spend money for, I would stop taking a moral stance against them and start purchasing their games again.
  • Maybe they should stop making shitty games?
  • Here's a little tip capcom,either come up better ideas or reboot all those classics from years back like onimusha,ghouls n ghosts,dino crisis and many others that people loved back in the day.Having played all the titles mentioned,i agree RE6 was a let down but i did enjoy dragons dogma and dmc
  • We call that karma.
  • Thing is, there's nothing wrong with their most recent games (aside from their fighters with the whole DLC fiasco, but the games weren't that bad, just overabundant). The main issue was their focus. Focus on making games. And DLC people WANT not DLC you can pump out in 5 minutes. Stop spending so much on making the games. You can have a game like RE6 look great visually and not have hundreds or thousands of people making it. And most importantly, try finding happy mediums. Obviously fanboys of your series are going to be butthurt by certain things that are actually good but don't feel the way the older games did. Be more active with your fans like you were with fixing RE6's issues with the camera and QTEs and stuff. And like you were supposed to be when making MML3 before canceling it. @#46 - Good thing you apparently missed everything after SFxT where they stopped doing that. None of DmC or RE6 is locked out. @#42 - You realize RE6 is the 3rd best selling RE, right? It sold more than every Resident Evil except RE4 and RE5. RE5 sold the most if I am not mistaken. As for DmC, it was still a million seller. That's considered selling well. In-series, DMC4 sold the most and DMC3 sold the worst (of the originals). DmC sold just under DMC3. @#17 - They reduced sales expectations for all their games because they had unrealistic expectations and spent way too much making their games. Especially for the fact their fans are insatiable. @#12 - Thing is, the devs/publishers are spending more than they need to. There is no "high cost of development" necessary. Some amazing games have come out this gen made by less than 100 people. But because of graphic whores and LOLOMG MAKE EVERY GAME A SHOOTAN EPIC they blow the budget like crazy and spend too much on it. They need to just make games and stop trying to make these glorified spectacles.
  • @50 I agree and oh yea, I meant to say SF characters... not charters.. my goofy ass!!
  • @50, technically, there was some locked content in RE6, which was then unlocked after it was discovered (the extra game mode and something else, not the ada campaign). A game that sells good doesn't make it an amazing game by any means, it wasn't awful, but it missed the mark on what it set out to do by a long shot, a game to please all aspects of fans, didn't please the older fans at all. You also need to take into account the growth of the medium when you talk about sales, video games are allot more mainstream then they where 10 years ago. I agree with what you've said though, why the hell would I need a horror game to be epic >.> @44, :/ going back to a market where Resi Evil dominated is a good way to loose sales? Hell, even if they do, they wouldn't need to spend nearly as much to make the game, so it'd even out. @45, because its just that easy to learn all you need to about video game making. Hell, I'd offer help with the art/designing if a project came together properly, but it wont.
  • "DMC is a dead series because no one cares anymore, not because the game was bad. Resident Evil just wasn't fun. Going horror is good way to lose even more sales. Only video game nerds want that. SF, well considering it's still the top fighting game I think they're fine." Moron.
  • Personally I've found Capcom to be a bit of a strange beast this generation. Con: They've become DLC mad, regularly blocking on-disk content and charging us extra to unlock it. Pro: It's rare to see a Capcom game feature an online pass. Con: They've taken my beloved Resident Evil franchise in a completely different direction. Pro: RE 5 and 6 were actually a lot of fun when played co-op, while Revelations is one of my favourite games in the series. Con: Re-releasing the same game multiple times, typically adding the word 'Super' as a prefix. Pro: They've released some new IPs, something which has become almost unheard of this generation. Remember Me looks ace and Dragon's Dogma is excellent. Overall, I'm still a Capcom fanboy deep down, but I'd be lying if I said I agreed with all of their business practices.
  • @41 I'm not talking about the sales they have reached. DMC 4 sold more in the same period of time (2 months) than this even came close to.
  • Capcom needs to stop with DLC and on disc DLC listen capcom just rerelease resident evil 0-3 in HD bundle and reboot the series but make it survive horror not over the top action and stop with the whole super arcade tournament gold version of the games
  • "Despite strong performances from DmC" SORRY but am i living in an alternate universe? They had to drop their total expected sales like what, 3 times? They dropped it to a million sales just before launch and it didn't even reach that. It hit about the 650,000 mark. So no DmC did not do well and it could well be a brilliant goty but they really should have made it a new IP then it wouldn't have been judged so harshly. As for resident evil 6 didn't they expect an unrealistic figure just like Tomb raider didn't hit the target despite being loved. Lost planet 3 won't sell shit they fucked up on that one as you all know, monster hunter would sell a ton if it just went fucking multiplat instead of exclusive to vita/wiiu, you know the consoles nobody owns.
  • Dragons Dogma and Resident Evil 6 were very impressive and honestly it would be a shame to lose a good company like capcom
  • According to Capcom DMC sold 1.1 million...and they have said they are happy with it's performance (as well as Dragon's Dogma). They dropped it's sales figures because they probably realized that they were insane for expecting to sell 5 million copies of that game. Everyone can say all they want about how it failed but Capcom was happy with how it performed, saying it “posted solid sales”, and in the end that's all that matters as far as sales go. I really enjoyed both DMC and Dragon's Dogma. I'm currently working on Resident Evil 6, about to start my Professional play through and finish up the original 1000...I must say it's pretty terrible (especially for a Resident Evil game). Not the worst game I've ever played but not very good.
  • my last Capcom game i bought was 5 years ago Devil May Cry 4 after that none of Capcoms games seem to interest me.
  • Reason being, Dogma was the only one of these that wasn't Ass. They tried to innovate on older IP's but they strayed too far and ruined Resi and Dmc. Add their shitty business practices, lack of respect for customers, and their general disinterest for what fans of their games want, it's a wonder they're making any money at all. They're running on fumes and strained fan goodwill. I hope someone acquires them. They need new management.
  • @17 Get YOUR head out of your ass. That game bombed. Just Look at how much the most recent previous one DMC 4 sold in comparison. Over TWICE as many. Devil may cry isn't THAT much of a niche game as you might think. And that came out in a much poorer economy; Back in 2008 when we were in the middle of an economic crisis of 2008. Don't lie to yourself. This one just did bad because ninja theory showed a lack of respect for the customers/fans of the game and the franchise in general, so people spoke with their wallets. If Ninja theory had made the game as it's own original IP, it might of done better. But the moment you use a Properties' name your damn well sure people are gonna compare it to the previous entries.
  • @52. To say that learning how to make games is easy bares a degree of niavety. So many things need to be taken into consideration. RE is a franchise that has dulled down its horror and included multiplayer to tie-in with the current trends: That being multiplayer and the ability to play with friends etc. Every game these days, whether it be Tomb Raider or Mass Effect 3 or Assassins Creed. These are games that have strong single player components, however they all have a multiplayer element as well. Dead space 3 is another horror franchise that (arguably) has dulled down on the scares and went for a more action heavy route. These companies need to make their money for the millions of dollars it costs them to make the game. With Resi 6 the game was (for me) enjoyable but it had no consistency, They tried to please everyone. That may be the risk of having nearly 13 designers working on the game. Hitting nearly 5 million for sales isn't bad. @62 DmC did well considering it came out a month after Christmas. In regards to Ninja Theory not respecting fans. A lot of the Devil May Cry 'community' didn't respect them either. Sending death threats to a company is counterproductive and disrespectful and shows that a degree of maturity is missing.
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