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Recently we had a little bit of discussion about Capcom’s attitude towards the arcade market – fans have been disappointed by the lack of an arcade version of games like Marvel VS. Capcom 3 or there is the friction that can fall into place with Capcom’s own prices on the few arcade products they decide to produce, such as the new Street Fighter games. If you want to get a better idea of why they don’t have much of a focus on the arcade market then you can read their Annual 2010 report that slices up the different divisions, their outlook on each division and it’s profitability. At the low end of the scale are arcade game sales. Now Capcom is obviously hurt in this area as they simply have not offered much to sale – after the first SFIV there isn’t much to talk about other than a couple of “medal games” they released. Top that off with every video title they produce is quickly ported to consoles which undercuts sales of arcade units and they charge an extra premium over their competitors which will make it more difficult to turn a profit. They recognize that operators are being extremely cautious with their game purchases due to the economy and where you’re paying quite a bit extra for a Capcom title it’s going to hurt and you’ll likely look to the many other fighting titles on the market.
If you get down to page 38 of the report it shows that “the highly profitable” Super Street Fighter IV is the bonafide flagship title they will have in arcades for the next fiscal year and that will be followed by one other coin-operated title, most likely Street Fighter X Tekken.
For the curious, you can read the report here (PDF format)
BTW, in case you missed the news, Capcom has shown off footage of the temporarily exclusive SSFIV Arcade characters Yun and Yang. Make sure you turn your speakers down before hitting play [via Neo-Arcadia]
My take from reading the report is this. They can’t seem to contain costs (always a problem in large companies) for the development of the arcade games and charge a premium for the machines as a result.
Their flag ship is Street Fighter which frankly is a very HARDCORE game. Unfortunately, this is not a game that will be played by families that are usually present in FECs around the world. To top it off the game is much too EXPENSIVE. A smart move would be offer a very competitive price for the arcade piece since you will then turn and sell it in the console space. However, it seems that management REFUSES to do this. They want it all and this is the end result.
So yes Capcom will continue to have a dismal outlook on arcade games for the reasons outlined above.
That’s the thing however – SSFIV was already completely developed for consoles and they should have made up their development costs on that by now. Adding new costumes, a few characters and maybe a level or two isn’t going to cost them that much. It’s a combination of their greed and as a commenter said in another thread, they know that big corporations in Japan will buy it even though it’s at a super-inflated price and they are fine with that.