I'm looking forward to the tell all book that will be written about Capcom's rise and fall.
But really as much as people knock Capcom's properties, I can't help but think that a cool 1 billion or so would be well worth it to any platform holder to get their hands on Street Fighter, Marvel VS, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter.
Are they really worth much?
Like let's take Street Fighter for example.
In its first 9 months on the market, it shipped 1.5 million copies.
Here's how some other publishers have done with fighting games:
Nintendo:
- Smash Bros 4 Wii U: 5.16 million
- Smash Bros 4 3DS: 8.59 million
Warner Bros:
- Mortal Kombat X: 5 million at launch, given how it kept selling, very easily 6-7+ million now.
- Injustice: This was ~4+ million at our last count.
Bandai Namco:
- Tekken 6: 3.5 million
Ubisoft:
- For Honor: I'm really willing to bet this gets over 5 million in its first year (if not much higher) given it was the best selling title of the year as of the end of February, but we'll see with their fiscal call.
Microsoft:
- Killer Instinct: This has 6 million unique players, and season 3 had record user engagement numbers. Now, this is certainly not akin to sales, given the business model, but it's still clearly reaching a large number of people, which as a console vendor is what you're really after.
Like I think you could pretty trivially just make your own fighting game and have a brand that's stronger than Street Fighter at this point. I'm certainly expecting ARMS to do better than Street Fighter V's LTD.
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 only did 2.2 million LTD despite being out for years, having the Marvel brand, and being released at a time Capcom was notably more relevant. Capcom also has to share money on this game with Marvel, unlike literally every other series listed above, where the publisher nets everything.