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Capcom talks Wii

by rawmeatcowboy
19 February 2007
GN 1.0 / 2.0

A portion of a Gamasutra interview with Capcom’s Vice President of Marketing Charles Bellfield…

GS: Do you see Capcom creating other studios in the same vein as Clover or is that a failed experiment at this point?

CB: Well that’s looking a little into the crystal ball at this moment. I think you never say never about anything but I do think the structure we have – we don’t have seperate delegated teams, we have one big team – is a great way to cross-pollinate skill sets across the whole organization, and also learning curves. So, for example, some of the team that worked on Clover titles are now helping Takeuchi-san on Resident Evil 5, helping Inafune-san on a new title for the Wii, so I think it’s very much the skill set still stays in the company when those individuals stay and, unfortunately, three individuals chose to leave.

I think the structure Capcom’s got in Japan is unique, it allows a cross-pollination between teams, a shared skillset that various games from various teams and different individuals can work on. We’re balancing that with external development talent in the West and in Japan as well when we do have dedicated teams we’re working with. In essence, at the end of the day, Capcom will always have a balance between different types of organizational structures.

GS: You mentioned a new title for the Wii. What are Capcom’s plans for the Wii and the PlayStation 3 going forward?

CB: I would love to give you my product lineup for the next five years, but… *laughs*. Obviously you saw Inafune-san mention we are developing a new title for the Wii platform. I will say we are developing a cross-support for all major platforms that are out there at the moment — the ones that have shipped for a while and the ones that recently shipped. We will be making announcements in the coming months as to what these different titles are.

GS: Are the games being developed for the Wii going to be exclusives or re-imagined ports from other platforms?

CB: It’s a good question… Capcom has to balance its content between some of its established brands that may come over to different platforms – obviously we have a track record there with Resident Evil 4 from Gamecube to PS2. We also have a track record of focusing key franchises on specific platforms such as the Devil May Cry brand. Also we’re launching new IPs on new platforms such as Dead Rising and Lost Planet. At the end of the day all I will say is there is a continuation of that same strategy of a mixture of strategies on each platform and with the different brands we’ve got.

Full interview here