14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Capcom has decided to make a significant push towards an increased presence in the mobile and social gaming space, with the leaders of development for Street Fighter and Monster Hunter Frontier leading the charge.
Yoshinori Ono, who is known for producing the Street Fighter series, told Japanese magazine Famitsu that, “Capcom has decided to look at the social-game field from the scope of the entire company. Instead of framing it in its own section like consoles or mobile games, it’s something that all of Capcom development is involved with.”
He added, “When it came to be decided who would lead this effort, the baton went to myself since I had a great deal of experience with game communities and to Kazunori Sugiura due to the knowledge he learned about customer service through his experience with Monster Hunter Frontier.”
Ono says that Capcom has understood that the group of players who is interested in social and mobile gaming is different from the one who purchases big console releases and plans to make sure that it creates experiences that are well suited for their needs.
The biggest Capcom successes in these fields so far have been The Smurf Village and a spin-off from the Resident Evil series.
It's not clear whether the publisher plans to create spin-offs of its major series, like Monster Hunter, Street Fighter and Resident Evil, for the social gaming public or whether the company plans to create all new intellectual property for the market.
Social gaming has been growing very quickly in the last year, especially on Facebook, but recent months have seen a number of first generation games flounder and players are eager to get ever more complex experiences from their free titles.
It will be interesting to see what Capcom can do to make a social version of a hardcore game like Street Fighter easy to understand and play.