Ten Reasons Why...Capcom is Messed Up

Last Week I talked about the Ten Reasons Why Capcom is my favorite 3rd party developer. I really love the company and I have enjoyed almost every game they've put out. But I may have made them out to look like they were invincible, that's certainly not the case. So here are my Ten Reasons Why Capcom is Messed Up.

10 - Keiji Inafune is now Gone from Capcom
So recently, one of the figureheads at Capcom resigned his position. There’s always going to be the debate whether he was pressured to leave or he left on his own accord. Often times in Japan, you’ll see this personal connection with honor and humiliation. There’s a huge fallout involving failure and you’ll see as soon as someone fails they’re never considered to be the same talent or even relevant anymore. The best example of this would Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo. The creator of the game boy and mentor even to Shigeru Miyamoto, Yokoi was a pillar at Nintendo. But then he was involved with the huge mistake that became the Virtual Boy and was forever banished to the depths of Nintendo’s office departments. Sometimes instead of accepting this demotion, you’ll see talent leave the company to form their own companies. This is what I assume Inafune’s departure to be. I think this is more of a social problem in Japan rather than a Capcom one, hence the reason why it’s ranked fairly low.

09 - Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects
Up until recently, this was a huge blemish on Capcom’s legacy. One of their most beloved franchises, the Marvel Versus series, had been swooped up by EA and defiled by this grotesque mutation. Don't argue that it was a competent game, the fact that it wasn't Marvel vs Capcom is enough argument from my side. To this day, I still wonder what EA said or offered to Marvel in order to make them leave Capcom. Of course there’s always the possibility that this was all a plan by Capcom to let the the Marvel license wane a bit before coming back and reinvigorating ten years later. But that’s giving people at Capcom, a lot of credit.

08 - Inability to make a good 3-d fighting game.
Capcom makes fighting games. They make great fighting games. I love their lesser known series but some thing I still don't understand is why Capcom hasn't been able to create a comparable 3-d fighter. They've tried it in the past with EX but it seems like the people at Capcom can only think in two dimensions. Even if you look at the recent Street Fighter IV, the biggest innovations were to take the look of 3-d but keep it in the two dimensional world. It's fine if Capcom doesn't want to create those kinds of fighters. It's just that they have a great IP in the Rival Schools that is ready to be given the limelight. Capcom would just have to figure out how.

07 - Failure to do anything with Breath of Fire, Onimusha, and Dino Crisis
Now, I don’t want to come off as some whiny fan boy bitching about whatever obscure game their favorite company didn’t release, so I’ll talk about this subject very delicately. How do you screw up Dino Crisis 3? How do you let Onimusha fade into obscurity? And how do you abandon your most prominent RPG franchise?

Recently there were talks about Onimusha and Dino Crisis and why they're not seeing a return. How much of that is PR being truthful, I'll never fully take any of it for complete honesty. But going back to the Inafune departure. The talent at Capcom don't think they can reinvigorate those franchises. They can't? Or they're afraid to try for fear of banishment? The miss steps taken with Dino Crisis and Onimusha were pretty obvious. And the obstacles to over come, though somewhat steep, are pretty clear as well. It's just the case of finding someone who can be confident enough to do it.

06 - Okamiden
Keeping with the theme of miss managed IPs, Okamiden has to be the biggest of them all. Japan's solution for is sagging development problems has been to bring everything to portables. We seen it from other developers with other high profile franchises. And we've seen it from Capcom as well. It wasn't enough to bring Okami to DS but most recently they've brought Mega Man Legends to the 3DS. The problem with these decisions is that they're strictly using the hype of bringing a dead franchise back to sell the game. I feel there's little effort being put forth to make a fantastic experience. These hopeful franchises are going to fall into obscurity when new players buy into the hype, play them for the first time, and think "So what was the big deal?" Okami and Mega Man Legends have their followings because players loved them during their heyday. But if the necessary improvements aren't made to bring them up to speed, they're still going to feel dated. One of the biggest problems with the original Okami was the lack of voice acting. Well congratulations Capcom for solving that problem by putting it on the DS.

05 - The Capcom "Unity" Card
Capcom has a branch called Capcom Unity. They specialize in trying to bring the community together and one of the ideas they thought of was creating special themed cards with characters on them. These included Street Fighter, Bionic Commando, and Resident Evil. I thoughtthis was cool for about 15 seconds. I remember seeing the announcement. Getting excited about a video game themed credit card. I went to go sign up and immediately realized I wasn't going to do it. Why? Fees. They had a fee for about everything. Activation. Usage. Over draft. Under draft. It was absolutely horrible. It wasn't even technically a credit card. You had to load up money on the card first, but I think they might have even charged for that. Ultimately it was a terrible idea and even worse in execution. They were basically charging their biggest fans who wanted to show their appreciation. I wanted to spit on them for creating such a piece of shit. Luckily enough, people realized it was a POS and the card closed down earlier this year.

Here's an example of some of the BS from the program - From the CAG forums

04 - Capcom 5
Back in my Nintendo days, I loved exclusives. I'd debate with friends in middle school between the SNES and Sega Genesis. I'd defend my Nintendo 64 from all the Playstation lovers. And when the GameCube came around, you can be sure I stood up for that purple cube like no other. One of GameCube owner's proudest moments came in the announcement that Capcom had a handful of exclusives only for nintendo, poetically called The Capcom Five. You can bet that when Playstation 2 owner found out that their beloved Resident Evil franchise wasn't going to be on a Sony system anymore, I was secretly smiling. Resident Evil 4 for that GameCube, I liked the sound of that. But eventually Capcom changed their mind as the lure of making more money was too great. Resident Evil 4, Viewtiful Joe, and Killer7 all made eventual releases on the Playstation 2, some with more extras included. Dead Phoenix was canceled and the only game to remain exclusive was the forgettable Product Number 03. Thanks Capcom for turning around swiftly and kicking a fanboy right in the balls.

03 - DLC Trend
If it's one thing we've always hated it's DLC. It's slimy. It's filthy. And I just don't trust it. I'm going to incredible lengths now to avoid supporting pieces of DLC. And it's a shame that Capcom is wholly on board. It's not that their just on board, but they're also handling the situation horribly. It feels like every little piece they can charge for, they have been. Taking out costumes in Resident Evil. Charging for them in Street Fighter. Making you pay for multi-player. And now releasing a Prologue and Epilogue for Dead Rising 2. It's horseshit and I hope people aren't supporting this kind of behavior. You don't know how many emails I've gotten from Capcom PR telling me a new Dead Rising theme is available for purchase. Ugh, Themes....

02 - Reliance on Monster Hunter
With Capcom, I’ve seen a reliance on a core set of titles. The risks being taken are far fewer and I'm worried that games like Bionic Commando and Dark Void will be the last of their kind. Those games did poorly because they were miss managed and had flaws. Running into a hole to publish more Monster Hunter isn't going to solve anything. I mean just this year at TGS, HALF of Capcom's booth was Monster Hunter. The rest were sequels with Mega Man Universe being the new IP. I'm fearing for Asura's Wrath as I think it's destined to fail.Monster Hunter will never break out of Japan if not given the proper improvements. It also won't go much further if Capcom doesn't push innovation and new ideas into the formula.What then?

Also to a lesser extent I lump the bastardization of Mega Man into this category. Mega Man doesn't nearly have the drawing power of something like Pokemon, but still Capcom has managed to convert Mega Man into some sort of child marketing strategy to sell more copies.

01 - Clover Studios
I can be honest, games from Clover didn't sell. That's why they were shut down and that's why some of Capcom's greatest talent is no longer there. Even now, it's debatable the success of Platinum Games. Video games are a business and the people at Capcom run their company with the idea of staying profitable. Certain decisions have to be made and I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of those making them. But I'll say right now, there are ways around every problem.

When I look at most of my gripes, they seem extremely tied to business decisions gone bad. There will be a talented developer who made a game that didn’t sell well or failed to meet expectations. Instead of trying to build off of those and make a better game next time around, lots of developers, not just Capcom, will hit the scrap button in favor of the safe choice. Rather than take responsibility for mismanagement or bad publicity, they’ll push the blame on other factors or even people.

From my experience, businesses are best built by working on long term goals. I see the dissolution of Clover Studios as the first step away from that mentality. The quick fix is never the answer and Capcom should focus on how to make games successful rather than cutting off games that aren't. It's like selling your Xbox off for cash to make rent this month. Sure you've solved the problem for this time, but when next month rolls around you can be sure you'll still have the same problem. Unless you've identified and fixed the problem, you're not going to be in any better of a position. Plus you'll be having to buy another Xbox.

Thanks for sticking around,
David

If you didn't read the original post here it is, Ten Reasons Why I Love Capcom.