Capcom wants to lower the development times for major franchise installments to 2.5 years.
“We want to reduce the time needed to develop major titles from the usual three-to-four years to only 2.5 years,” Capcom chairman and CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto told investors today.
“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.”
Is a game every two-and-a-half years enough to push Capcom into “milking” territory? In comparison, Activision releases a core Call of Duty title every year, and Ubisoft has announced it wants to release its major games on a similar yearly schedule. Currently, the only game in Capcom’s stable on track to hit the 2.5 year target is Lost Planet 3. Resident Evil 6 is still expected to take a total of 3.5 years to complete.
Though Capcom’s decision to outsource some of its key series to Western developers has thus far resulted in lukewarm critical responses and extended development periods, the publisher will still be relying on outside developers to help it hit its 2.5 year goal.
“For DmC: Devil May Cry, development will require five years due to the time needed to select development companies because of our decision to switch to external development,” he continued. “But our goal is to reduce the cycle to 2.5 years for subsequent titles in this series.”
Judging by DmC: Devil May Cry‘s current release date, that means we’ll be seeing another version of janky crack Dante as early as 2015.
Source: GameSpot
Published: May 23, 2012 11:10 pm