Hoo boy, a lot to unpack here.
I don't know, but I'm just glad MH isn't tied to Nintendo anymore. I just cannot play on portables, so glad its finally not looking like a PS2 game and I can jump into the series.
Yeah, now it can look like a PS3 game instead.
Capcom has been pretty rudderless of late. SFV bombed and Marvel 4 looks to be another disaster and they've still haven't learned anything from NRS. Resident Evil 7 was a nice surprise, but the company is rather limping along.
Capcom has been rudderless for a long time now, going on past a decade now.
Or, we could just take granted what devs and mod on neogaf said: Nintendo was nintendoing again and send out few devkits and most of them too late and major companys are not intressted in halting major production to port engines and then port the games (which is not the same thing btw.) because switch is not the most important plattform under the sun by any stretch
Capcom seems to be one of the earlier companies with kits, seeing as how they were able to provide input on final hardware specification.
I'm reminded of an old quote from a Capcom representative/developer, back in the GameCube days: "Maybe Nintendo should just buy Capcom".
I'll get to this later, but just know that you have investors on your side regarding Capcom being bought out.
They also statesd in their latest financial annual report that they are going to include Switch more in their multiplatform strategy
let's wait and see, even if it is absolutely normal to be suspicious right now
I'm going to need a citation for this.
If Capcom does not do any restructuring to their company I fear they will continue to head downhill. Monster Hunter is literally their saving grace at this point.
Capcom is clearly struggling in getting back to their high quality days and find new success in their established franchises. They've failed so far with SFV and RE. Hopefully Monster Hunter World is a success, because if that one fails, I'd place bets that they have to fusion or will be bought out.
Hopefully it's not Konami in that case.
Not hoping anything. Capcom is killing themselves just fine. I'm just saying maybe they'll expedite the process. If anyone wants to see any of Capcom's older franchises their death and those IPs in the hands of others is really the only way it's going to happen at this point. Does anyone honestly think differently?
Well, I dunno who it will be, but it's going to be someone, if shareholders have anything to say about it. It seems they voted yet again this year to abolish their protections against large-scale share buyouts and takeovers, a clear vote of no confidence in the Tsujimoto family to steward the company without drastic changes, given the company's mismanagement of profits from the only game that's made them any consistent profit.
Of the companies that could do so, it will likely be a Japanese company that's interested in expanding their presence in either Japanese game development or their arcade presence and a company that could afford to absorb them.
With that in mind, you can exclude Konami, Sega Sammy (who has their own shaky financial situation to worry about), Koei Tecmo, and (judging from their release of IO) Square Enix. You can also likely exclude Microsoft and Sony from that equation (more on that later).
So that really just leaves Bandai Namco and Nintendo to come to the table, unless someone completely out of left field (i.e. a company that doesn't operate within the industry) tables an offer.
And between the 2 options, Nintendo offers the opportunity for less corporate restructuring, as they would likely just sell off the pachislot and arcade divisions to Bandai Namco or another party who would only want Capcom for those pieces of their business, while retaining the remainder and their staff as a subsidiary that can continue to operate in Osaka. Capcom's eSports background would be of huge value to Nintendo, as well, given their current direction with their IP lineup.
Capcom is in a very weak position, and all it's going to take is one big financial misstep for things to come crashing down. Had RE7 not modestly panned out for them, this year's financials would look really bleak. Speaking as someone who doesn't play Monster Hunter and only sees it as "the franchise that's kept Capcom from bankruptcy" (because if we're honest, it is), I see MH World as such a potential misstep.
So we may not have long to wait for this future scenario to occur, as much as people wouldn't want it to.
They probably could afford to (fairly easily too), and it might actually be worth it just for the IPs alone. But it's not gonna happen, that's not how Nintendo operates.
Let's not assume we know how Nintendo operates. We very clearly don't and they've engaged in such M&A behaviour before, such as with Monolith and NERD, among others. And we especially know nothing of Kimishima's thoughts on the subject.
If anything, I'd say taht Sony is way more closer to buy Capcom than Nintendo LOL
Sony doesn't seem to have any interest in further investing in Japanese game development studios, they can barely get output from their current internal studios there and they clearly are more interested in investing in Western development studios. So they may be capable, but unlikely to be interested. No, any purchase of Capcom is going to happen by someone else.