Capcom Sales Up 8.6% Over Last Year, Predicting Sharp Decline This Year

Capcom is a bit of a whipping boy when it comes to the video games industry. Furious Megaman fans took action and lowered their rating with the Better Business Bureau when several games starring the blue bomber were canceled. Their mega crossover game with Tekken was shunned by the fighting game community and rejected by consumers for having shipped with too much on disc DLC. Even their flagship title, Resident Evil, had a sequel that was shunned by critics for having an identity crisis and failed to sell to expectations. 
 
Capcom is a survivor though, they are one of the few Japanese developers that's been around since the 8-bit days and hasn't had to merge with another company (I'm looking at you SNK Playmore) or close their doors. Despite having a year with flops like Lost Planet 3, Remember Me, and DmC... they did significantly better than the year before. 


 
They credit the bump in sales to strong performance from Monster Hunter 4 and breaking 1 million sales on both Dead Rising 3 and Resident Evil: Revelations. As part of their financial report, they also predict that from now until next March, they are only expecting 80 million yen in sales... far lower than 2012/2013.
 
This could mean a couple things for Capcom in the next year... the most obvious being they don't have a game in the Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Marvel vs Capcom, or Street Fighter (proper, not DLC) franchise ready for release. It likely also means there will be less Capcom games released in general, which goes in line with their previous statements about cutting back on outsourcing games to western developers. The other prospect that excites me the most is perhaps in this next year we will be seeing Capcom's lesser known franchises like Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, Dino Crisis, etc that haven't had much time in the sun over the last decade and aren't known to be high selling games.  
 
This should be a very interesting year for Capcom, they're in the middle of building 2 new studios from the ground up in Osaka, and hiring 100 new employees every year--  many of which are surely grew up on classic Capcom games. 
 
Source- Capcom.co.jp