From their annual report: http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/annual/2016/annual_2016_01.pdf
General:
- Capcom has added 500 new development staff since 2012, and intends to add 500 more by 2020. These are largely college grads added annually, so there's a bit of a warm up time as they learn the ropes, but we should see a major spike in their output soon.
- I covered this in the previous thread, but they're also trying to hire more diverse staff, and now have 20% women in development and an unspecified increase in international staff.
- Capcom notes "We cannot ignore genres such as shooting and strategy games with massive numbers of players when considering Consumer, Online and eSports market growth potential." I'm going to make a separate thread about this one so people can have fun speculating, but I'll include it here for posterity as well.
- Capcom talks about how they intend to dig up some of their old IPs and either reboot or re-imagine them. I'm putting this here since the later parts of this make it clear this is a split idea between both console and mobile.
- There's a lot in here about how they like to make multimedia stuff these day.
- This is a side note, but they mention the video game market (all platforms) is expected to exceed $103.2 billion in 2018, up from $68.8 billion in 2014.
- Here is what Capcom's income breakdown currently looks like by product category. To note, traditional PC games (like Dragon's Dogma on Steam) count in the console/download segment (indicated by the controller icon), whereas things like Dragon's Dogma Online are part of the PC Online segment (indicated by the monitor):
Capcom's Divisional Structure:
- "Division 1 creates global contents including Resident Evil."
- "Division 2 works with online games such as Street Fighter."
- "Division 3 develops contents for Japan, including Monster Hunter and Sengoku BASARA."
Console/Traditional PC Specific:
- Capcom's console game division has 1500 staff.
- 20% of Capcom's console game division is working on new IP.
- Capcom is making a third try at putting games on a 2.5 year development cycle. This time, their approach consists of having way more staff, and having a rather complex looking development structure where everyone's time is utilized more productively across various projects.
- Capcom is putting a big focus into both VR and eSports as corporate objectives. Resident Evil 7 and Street Fighter V are their two current examples for those categories, with more coming in the future.
- Capcom's current digital sales ratio is 29.8% (projected) for this year. They would like to reach 50%+ in the medium term (generally this means 3-5 years).
- Capcom hopes to make catalog sales (sales of games released in previous fiscal years) an increasingly large part of their business through long tail product support. Capcom's catalog game sales have increased from 3.9 million in 2013 to 7 million in 2016, and this represents 46.7% of their income, so the plan seems to be working.
- As might be obvious from the above notes, part of Capcom's plan to increase digital revenue and tail end sales is to run many of their games as services with a variety of post launch cosmetics, add-on content, etc. If you look at Street Fighter V, you'll get the idea. I imagine Resident Evil 7 has a season pass as well, but we'll see.
- Capcom notes "If we are unable to continue generating content qualitatively equal to global AAA titles, Capcom has no future as a company specializing in games."
Mobile/PC Online Specific:
- Capcom's mobile/PC Online department has 500 staff.
- Capcom has finished merging their mobile departments, and now their mobile games will overwhelmingly consist of games using Capcom's internal IP that target a global audience.
- The first four games made entirely under this new strategy will release next fiscal year (starting April 2017) and consist of games based on Mega Man, Monster Hunter, and Sengoku Basara. Presumably one of these brands has multiple titles. I once reported these are releasing this fiscal year. My apologies, I didn't quite understand the timeframe from the report from 3-6 months ago.
- Capcom considers Monster Hunter Explore to be a hit, but their other recent mobile games to not be hits. They are dedicated to remedying this situation.
- Toward this end, in addition to the above reforms, Capcom is looking to buy mobile developers to strengthen their mobile offerings.
- Capcom is also focusing a lot of effort into growing mobile expertise internally because they feel it's critical they have this knowledge given where the market is headed. Or, explained more easily, if they only partner with external developers, if those external developers go work with someone else instead, Capcom would be in bad shape if they didn't have internal mobile talent.
- There's a lot in here about how they intend to work with various Asian partners to expand their reach into the rest of Asia. Pretty much every Japanese third party is doing this these days.
Additional Notes:
- There's an analyst interview printed in here where an analyst asks good questions about everything Capcom is struggling with, and Capcom gives a bunch of not-amazing answers. It's kind of amazing. Of course, since this is Capcom's official report, the analyst gives a polite "Good job with your answers Capcom!" summary box, though does note that they should consider partnering with expert mobile studios to expand their mobile line-up more effectively.
- There's a bunch of developer interviews in here near the bottom. Most of them are flufff. However, in one of them, it's implied that Dragon's Dogma Online is seen as the sequel to Dragon's Dogma as done by Dragon's Dogma's development team, and they talk about their long term plans for the game, so I wouldn't hold my breath for Dragon's Dogma 2.
General:
- Capcom has added 500 new development staff since 2012, and intends to add 500 more by 2020. These are largely college grads added annually, so there's a bit of a warm up time as they learn the ropes, but we should see a major spike in their output soon.
- I covered this in the previous thread, but they're also trying to hire more diverse staff, and now have 20% women in development and an unspecified increase in international staff.
- Capcom notes "We cannot ignore genres such as shooting and strategy games with massive numbers of players when considering Consumer, Online and eSports market growth potential." I'm going to make a separate thread about this one so people can have fun speculating, but I'll include it here for posterity as well.
- Capcom talks about how they intend to dig up some of their old IPs and either reboot or re-imagine them. I'm putting this here since the later parts of this make it clear this is a split idea between both console and mobile.
- There's a lot in here about how they like to make multimedia stuff these day.
- This is a side note, but they mention the video game market (all platforms) is expected to exceed $103.2 billion in 2018, up from $68.8 billion in 2014.
- Here is what Capcom's income breakdown currently looks like by product category. To note, traditional PC games (like Dragon's Dogma on Steam) count in the console/download segment (indicated by the controller icon), whereas things like Dragon's Dogma Online are part of the PC Online segment (indicated by the monitor):
Capcom's Divisional Structure:
- "Division 1 creates global contents including Resident Evil."
- "Division 2 works with online games such as Street Fighter."
- "Division 3 develops contents for Japan, including Monster Hunter and Sengoku BASARA."
Console/Traditional PC Specific:
- Capcom's console game division has 1500 staff.
- 20% of Capcom's console game division is working on new IP.
- Capcom is making a third try at putting games on a 2.5 year development cycle. This time, their approach consists of having way more staff, and having a rather complex looking development structure where everyone's time is utilized more productively across various projects.
- Capcom is putting a big focus into both VR and eSports as corporate objectives. Resident Evil 7 and Street Fighter V are their two current examples for those categories, with more coming in the future.
- Capcom's current digital sales ratio is 29.8% (projected) for this year. They would like to reach 50%+ in the medium term (generally this means 3-5 years).
- Capcom hopes to make catalog sales (sales of games released in previous fiscal years) an increasingly large part of their business through long tail product support. Capcom's catalog game sales have increased from 3.9 million in 2013 to 7 million in 2016, and this represents 46.7% of their income, so the plan seems to be working.
- As might be obvious from the above notes, part of Capcom's plan to increase digital revenue and tail end sales is to run many of their games as services with a variety of post launch cosmetics, add-on content, etc. If you look at Street Fighter V, you'll get the idea. I imagine Resident Evil 7 has a season pass as well, but we'll see.
- Capcom notes "If we are unable to continue generating content qualitatively equal to global AAA titles, Capcom has no future as a company specializing in games."
Mobile/PC Online Specific:
- Capcom's mobile/PC Online department has 500 staff.
- Capcom has finished merging their mobile departments, and now their mobile games will overwhelmingly consist of games using Capcom's internal IP that target a global audience.
- The first four games made entirely under this new strategy will release next fiscal year (starting April 2017) and consist of games based on Mega Man, Monster Hunter, and Sengoku Basara. Presumably one of these brands has multiple titles. I once reported these are releasing this fiscal year. My apologies, I didn't quite understand the timeframe from the report from 3-6 months ago.
- Capcom considers Monster Hunter Explore to be a hit, but their other recent mobile games to not be hits. They are dedicated to remedying this situation.
- Toward this end, in addition to the above reforms, Capcom is looking to buy mobile developers to strengthen their mobile offerings.
- Capcom is also focusing a lot of effort into growing mobile expertise internally because they feel it's critical they have this knowledge given where the market is headed. Or, explained more easily, if they only partner with external developers, if those external developers go work with someone else instead, Capcom would be in bad shape if they didn't have internal mobile talent.
- There's a lot in here about how they intend to work with various Asian partners to expand their reach into the rest of Asia. Pretty much every Japanese third party is doing this these days.
Additional Notes:
- There's an analyst interview printed in here where an analyst asks good questions about everything Capcom is struggling with, and Capcom gives a bunch of not-amazing answers. It's kind of amazing. Of course, since this is Capcom's official report, the analyst gives a polite "Good job with your answers Capcom!" summary box, though does note that they should consider partnering with expert mobile studios to expand their mobile line-up more effectively.
- There's a bunch of developer interviews in here near the bottom. Most of them are flufff. However, in one of them, it's implied that Dragon's Dogma Online is seen as the sequel to Dragon's Dogma as done by Dragon's Dogma's development team, and they talk about their long term plans for the game, so I wouldn't hold my breath for Dragon's Dogma 2.
