“Nice wallet, it’d look better with my dick in it!”
Like most “AAA” publishers, Capcom is finding itself in a market no longer capable of meeting its extravagant financial expectations. At a time where even a game selling five million copies is considered a failure, the company has one answer — an avalanche of DLC!
Capcom’s forecast revisions are centered around an upgraded downloadable content strategy, to the point where it’s no longer interested in making games that can’t offer buckets of extra stuff sold piecemeal. It reports that it’s “strictly re-evaluated” projects currently in progress, in order to have them comply with this new plan.
Indeed, the company has placed the blame for its recent underperformance entirely at the feet of its slow adoption of the “digital contents market,” which is ironic when you consider how lambasted the company is for adopting that market so shamelessly.
The company also noted that outsourcing games to Western developers hasn’t been helping either, and aims to keep projects more internal from now on.
Over the next fiscal year, Capcom plans to boost profits by adopting the following strategies:
- Promoting the digital strategy (DLC) in the consumer business.
- Aim for growth surpassing that of the market by reinforcing the Online and Mobile Contents business.
- Strengthen earnings base by expanding the title lineup in the P&S business.
When run through the Business Speak Translator, the company is basically saying, “DLC mobile gaming DLC lol.”
This shouldn’t come as a major surprise to those following the mainstream game business. It’s become quite clear that companies like Capcom are trying their damnedest to retain their cashflow in the face of a fragmented audience by making more money per game sold. If Capcom can’t increase it’s audience size, it’ll fleece the current one for more cash.
This “double dip” approach is likely to become more and more commonplace as publishers refuse to accept anything less than the same amount of profit they’ve grown accustomed to.
Like so many recent tactics in the game industry, it’ll probably work … for a while. It’ll work until enough people get sick of spending $60 on little more than a content delivery system, grow tired of microtransactions and subscriptions, hold out for obligatory Complete Editions, and eventually migrate to the many, many competing forms of entertainment that constantly vie for their attention.
Not that publishers care. After all, the only thing that matters is making the cash now. They can always have a round of fucking layoffs later.
Capcom’s Forecast Revisions [via NeoGAF]
