Capcom doesn’t trust Western developers with new IPs
The unequivocal failure of Bionic Commando has clearly knocked Capcom’s confidence in Western developers. The title which was outsourced to the now defunct Swedish developers Grinn only managed to shift 27,000 units in its first month in the U.S.
This has forced Capcom to rethink their strategy with only Japanese studios likely to be trusted with new IPs in the future.
According to Capcom, Bionic Commando “demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new [titles] to overseas companies.” This does not mean Capcom are abandoning Western developers altogether; they cite it a necessity to outsource some titles should they want to continue working on as many titles as they do.
“We cannot develop a sufficient number of titles without using the resources of these companies. This is why we plan to continue using these alliances.”
In the future, Western developers are expected to deal only “with well-established characters and universal themes.”
