Dear Reader:
Capcom talks future of Onimusha, Dino Crisis series
The following comments come from Capcom VP of Strategic Planning and Business Development Christian Svensson…
“Onimusha is tricky in particular given how Japanese-focused the franchise has been. When you look at the timing and sales trend of how Onimusha has gone each outing – I won’t give you the exact numbers, but let’s just say every outing subsequently has been about 60% of the prior - the brand doesn’t right now have quite the resilience that you might think. I don’t know that internally there’s, on the creative side, massive fire to say, ‘Ah, I know have to fix that and reboot that and make that huge again.’ For the time being I think it’s in percolate mode, that is to say, it’s not forgotten internally, there are discussions that go on, but I don’t think anyone has sort has come up with the ‘that’s it’ idea of how to get the game back up to 3 or 4 million units. You may see some things of the brand pop up in the future, I can’t say what, but there are certainly discussions about it.”
“Dino Crisis 3 I think is where it went off the rails if I recall. Dino Crisis’ success really was an out cropping of Resident Evil 1 and 2. There are discussions, Dino Crisis comes up from time to time, but there isn’t any burning desire from R&D or the business side to light that franchise back up again. Until there’s an internal champion with something incredible, things just sort of sit there. You’d be amazed how many franchises where we’re like ‘oh that was great, that was amazing,’ but the question is how we make that a compelling and contemporary game experience. As much as I love Dino Crisis, I don’t think pre-rendered backgrounds; tank-controlled dinos are going to sell to the level that’s going to cover the budgets that it takes to make something competitive in that space. Someone internally may cook up an idea, but we haven’t seen the fire from R&D yet and no one’s come up with the idea yet.”