You want a flash in the pan? Cater to casual gamers. You want a long tail-end? Make a good game. Capcom had to find out the hard way that gimping an established core franchise to suit the needs of the mainstream casual market will get a massive amount of first-month sales but after that, things dry up faster than Charlie Sheen's nose hairs after snorting a mountain of coke.
According to GameIndustry.biz, Capcom has noted that they'll be delaying Monster Hunter 4 in order to further pad the next fiscal year due to the poor sales of Resident Evil 6. They've also lowered their profit forecasts by 33 percent and their sales by 11 percent.
According to a company representative...
"Sales of the major new title Resident Evil 6 were initially strong but subsequently weakened. As a result, sales for this title are certain to fall short of the plan,"
No kidding, Sherlock. But what's weird is, why would sales fall short for Monster Hunter 4 unless the game is gimped? Most games with long tails are due to positive word of mouth, like DayZ and Arma II or Borderlands 2...or every other Monster Hunter game out there. Hopefully they didn't casaulize it like they did Resident Evil.
The thing is, word around the block is that Resident Evil 6 is sort of fun, it's somewhat enjoyable; it's a game you can play if you don't mind a hand-holding, AAA mainstream casualized shoot-fest. Does it enhance what Capcom started with Resident Evil 4? No, it just tosses in more quick-time events. Does it take a new direction? Nope, it just added more campaigns to try to appease to every single action/horror gaming demographic out there. Was it a quality title that will be remembered throughout the history of video game culture? Heck no.
There was a lot that Capcom could have done with Resident Evil 6 that easily could have made it the sort of game with a long tail-end, sort of the way Resident Evil 4 had a ridiculously long tail-end, to the point where they were still porting that game over well into a new console generation and making tons of money on it while doing so.
Anyway, the real losers in this are Monster Hunter fans, as Capcom will aim to shuffle their fiscal expectations around for a strong 2013 showing. Monster Hunter 4 has been moved from its March, 2013 release date and the game will now release for the Nintendo 3DS during the summer.
As for Capcom as a business...it looks like disc-locked content backfired on them and so has trying to cash in on the casual audience.
