Capcom announced this morning that their board of directors has approved a resolution to lower their forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013 to reflect a “special loss” of ¥6,949 million (approximately $71 million USD). The cause of this one time event is an ongoing review of the publisher’s “business expansion strategy” and restructuring expenses related to a change in their “game development strategy.”
The revised fiscal year forecast now shows the company pulling in a net profit of ¥2.9 billion (approximately $29.5 million USD), down from their prior forecast of ¥6.5 billion (approximately $66.3 million USD), based largely on “robust sales” of their Resident Evil 5 Pachinko machine in Japan. Capcom also noted that their prior sales forecast revisions for both Resident Evil 6 and DmC Devil May Cry have been slightly lowered again to 4.9m and 1.15m copies respectively (down from 5.0m and 1.2m).
Capcom places the blame for their current financial hardship on a “delayed response to the expanding digital contents market,” “insufficient coordination between the marketing and game development divisions in overseas markets,” and a “decline in [game] quality due to excessive outsourcing.” As a result, the publisher announced that they have discontinued the “development of certain titles outsourced overseas that are no longer compatible with [their] current business strategy.”
Unfortunately, Capcom did not reveal any of the games that they have stopped production on, however, a revised release schedule for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014 shows that Monster Hunter 4 (3DS), Lost Planet 3 (PS3, Xbox 360), and Resident Evil Revelations: Unveiled Edition (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U) are all still in development.
Notably missing from the release list is Dontnod Entertainment’s Remember Me, which was recently delayed to June 4th in North America (June 7th across Europe). It is currently unknown if this is one of the titles that Capcom has stopped production on.
We will update this post as Capcom releases more information about their canceled projects.