Capcom Earnings Drop 70%

Ouch.  What else can we say?  Capcom has seen a massive drop in first quarter earnings this year. They cited the appreciating yen as one of the main culprits, but also gave specific games a verbal prod for failing to reach expectations.

For the three month period ended June 30, Capcom saw sales of Â¥19,037 million – a 2.4% drop from the same three month period the year prior. Operating income fell 72.6% to Â¥1,005 million.

Capcom’s core Consumer Online Games division was hit with a 62.1% drop in earnings. Lost Planet 2 seems to be the whipping boy for this one as it “underperformed its projection substantially.” Monster Hunter 3 and Ghost Trick were also described as having difficulties.

So, grim news indeed – but has it come as a surprise?  Whilst Lost Planet 2 was a solid game, it failed to make an impact with the gaming press, and Monster Hunter 3 – in my opinion at least – lost a large chunk of its audience when it made the switch to the Wii which is hardly well known for its online capabilities.

Hopefully things can turn around, although a number of key releases are still many months from completion.

Source: Andriasang

15 Comments

  1. Capcom are a good old bunch.

    Heres hoping things turn around for them!

  2. New ip needed instead of constantly producing sequels or re-releases.

  3. What? They didn’t blame it on piracy? How bizarre.. Seriously tho, I hope they can turn things around, the industry would be poorer without them.

    • nah, preowned sales are the new whipping boy.

  4. As i mentioned in an article a couple of days ago

    I think Capcom are has-beens, they rocked the 16bit scene with titles like Strider, Forgotten Worlds, Mercs, Ghouls ‘n ghosts (ghosts n’ goblins), Gauntlet, Final Fight and of course SF2 was in its hayday (SFIV is straight up remake of that IMO)
    they carried on the good work to the PSOne with Resident Evil, but since then they’ve done bugger all of note.

    • I don’t know, I really enjoyed Resident Evil 4 (and 5 to a slightly lesser extent). They also produced Dead Rising, which was awesome and has got an eagerly anticipated sequel on the way, and the Devil May Cry series which, although flagging as of late, was really popular initially. They have had a bit of a dip recently, but I would say they have produced some crackers on the PS2, PS3 and 360.

      • Yeah, i know I was overly-simplistic in my breakdown, but looking at their quality PS3 releases we see a rather weak DMC4 in the early days when no one owned a PS3, Lost Planet 2 which was remarkably average, and Resi5 which has as many (if not more) detractors as it does fans and of course the polished SFIV

        In 3 years that’s a pretty poor return from a great developer who’s path to recovery seems to be on flogging a million different version of Street Fighter and now 2 or 3 Resi games a year.

      • I would definitely agree that we have yet to see a top notch game for the PS3 from them, fingers crossed for Dead Rising 2! A Monster Hunter game would be very welcome as well. They do have a habit of pumping out sequels though.

      • a million different version of street fighter? how cynical, a hundred thousand at most, maybe two.
        seriously though, they do seem to be relying on past glories, yet another street fighter, yet another resident evil, yet another megaman, though that one could actually be good.

  5. This isn’t the Capcom I know what where they thinking!

  6. well personally i can say i love lost planet 2 its awesome and i just got the dlc today :)

  7. Capcom should be making loads of money with the amount I give them for just costumes.

  8. Well I will do my part to help out good old capcom if lost planet 2 turns out to support the move. It seems as if the game already has support for it, looking at the “bounding box” aiming option.

  9. Make Strider HD, that’ll make em’ some cash.

    • If I could retweet comments, I’d retweet that one.

      Not sure if it would turn their fortunes around, but I’d buy it and Mercs, Ghouls N’Ghosts etc

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