Capcom's plan for profit: Shorter dev cycles, smaller teams

Capcom saw revenues and profits fall year-over-year for the last fiscal year -- but it has big plans to turn its fortunes around and create a more stable title portfolio for this year. With revenue down 16.0 percent to ¥82.1 billion ($12.9 billion) and profits down 13.2 percent to ¥6,723 billion ($1.1 billion) the company admitted that the decline was down to it releasing "only a few major titles" over the course of the year. However, it's ready to put new ideas into effect and see where this leads. First on the agenda is shortening the development cycle of sequels, via an "efficient development structure." Right now, Capcom releases sequels for each of its popular series roughly every two and half years. This is due to the fact that titles usually take around 3-4 years to develop, said the company. Capcom plans to change all that. From now on, it will be cutting down these sales cycles in order to stabilize earnings and promote more growth within the company. Teams will now be limited to 100 members, with the development process shortened and multiple sequels developed at the same time. This means that Capcom can put out popular games faster, while also pulling in extra revenue from additional game content such as DLC and in-game purchases. Alongside this, the company will look to strength its portfolio of games by funneling more funds into new IP and building up new brands. If a new title can be converted into a hit franchise, this can bring in significant revenues, noted the company, and therefore Capcom will be allocating around 20 percent of its development investment funds into enhancing new brands. This includes expanding on newer IP, such as Dragon's Dogma, it said.