Panta Rhei seems to have kicked their plans for this gen straight in the ass.
It certainly comes across that way.
Why is this a surprise? You do realize Capcom proper hasn't actually released a single current gen console game? They've just ported some PS360 fare and (partially) funded a western developed Dead Rising in partnership with MS. They're for all intents and purposes as dead as Konami.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, in this industry can be as dead as Konami.
Aren't they broke? Not like, "we're shutting down broke", but like--last time people looked at their cash flow it was shockingly low, and in general everything we've been seeing from them lately indicates to me they're not exactly on top of the world. Everything from asking Sony to help with one of/their biggest franchise to having a year in which some of their major releases include a PC port of a by then 4 year old game and some F2P stuff.
They're either having a slow year and 2017 will be the recovery, or they're broke lol.
There's been some debate as to how financially secure Capcom is, but their share price has gone up, at the very least, almost entirely on the back of strong performance from the Monster Hunter IP.
That being said, their market cap has rebounded to $2 billion (up from $1.35 billion in June, which put them lower than Koei Tecmo), so they're not quite financially in the shitter, but given the volatility with Capcom's investors and their prospects for next year, that might not last very long.
They're turning into Konami/SEGA did last gen, downsizing, downsizing some more and then the inevitable fate will be mobile phone games and nothing else. Disappointing but at least other Japanese publishers like Bandai-Namco, Koei-Tecmo and Square-Enix are all picking up the slack from the likes of SEGA, Capcom and Konami...
Their mobile game division is one of the longest-running among Japanese publishers and they haven't seen the kind of success they have been hoping for, so going almost entirely mobile-focused is kinda not in the cards for them.
And the downsizing was to be expected, considering that they had been on a downward slide for the better part of 10 years. Mind you, the talent bleed they experienced basically took care of most of that for them.
Of course it's underwhelming, but as a serious development house Capcom are more or less dead. Their deranged behaviour last gen cost them a fortune and now they don't have the talent or money to develop any truly AAA titles with the regularity they did during the PS2 era. Most of their titles are outsourced and if they aren't, they're probably on the 3DS.
If they didn't have Monster Hunter they would probably have gone bust by now.
I can't exactly disagree with this sentiment, though it's tough to predict the outcome of a "what-if" scenario when there's a pretty big "if" involved.
We're taking about a company that was used to regularly release quality console games across multiple series and genres. Now they are restricted to handhelds mostly and their console titles are outsourced.
They've been making a concerted effort to bring development back in-house, but it may be a "too little, too late" scenario. Only time will tell at this point, but I agree, doesn't look good.
Capcom should have not spent their time and resources into developing Panta Rhei. They should have just used UE4 for their games this generation. It would have allowed them to put resources in to game development and not engine development. I do think Deep Down looks fantastic with the Panta Rhei engine but at what cost?
I can understand the motivation to make Panta Rhei a thing that exists and hindsight on that situation is definitely 20/20 (srsly, no one could have predicted how the UE situation would have so dramatically changed for Japanese developers almost overnight), so we can't exactly fault them for trying or consider it a poorly-considered decision, just merely one that didn't work out.
But considering the hiccups that Panta Rhei seems to have hit and that we're 2 years into the PS4/XBO lifespan without a single game that uses it? Perhaps it's time to cut the losses. UE4 looks incredibly versatile and easier to use for Japanese developers, so I think it's about time to give up the ghost.
.
