14 DAY TRIAL // The leadership of one of the biggest Japanese publishers has announced that the company plans to cut the development time for its biggest titles from three to four years to just two and a half years, mainly by using more manpower to handle the essential tasks.
Kenzo Tsujimoto, who is the chief executive officer of Capcom, has told investors that, “Speeding up development will probably raise the cost. But creating quality content will be vital to Capcom’s ability to survive by overcoming intense global competition. We will make substantial investments to develop this content.”
He added, “For example, we may have five titles for which we can launch sequels over the next two and a half years. In this case, we can even out the introduction dates in order to launch major titles on a regular basis.”
Capcom will try and space out its biggest games in the coming years and then add a constant drip of downloadable content to keep players satisfied while they wait for the big new launch.
In order to show how the new approach will work, Tsujimoto has talked about Lost Planet 2 and 3, which will have a space of just two and a half years between them, while another high-profile franchise, Resident Evil, had to wait three and a half years in order to get the sixth installment, even after the success of the fifth one.
It seems that the Devil May Cry series, which is now being rebooted, will be the one exception to the new two and a half year rule for Capcom, with five years needed to create the new game because of the decision to use a Western developer to create the game.
The Ninja Theory made Devil May Cry game is currently set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 during January 2013, with a PC and probably a Nintendo Wii U version set to arrive at a later date.