Capcom Taking Their Ball and Going Home by Dropping Outsourced Devs.

Apparently Capcom really hates losing money. After titles such as 2009’s Bionic Commando and early 2010’s Dark Void failed to swing and or fly off shelves, Capcom has decided to scale back its reliance on foreign developers to provide its new ips. Both titles were both tepidly received and sold very poorly.

Bionic Commando, the reboot of a Classic NES franchise developed by Swedish Company GRIN, was highly anticipated and was seen as one of Capcom’s flagship titles last year beside Street Fighter 4 and Resident Evil 4. However it only moved 27,000 copies in its first month of release. One of the negative outcomes of its performance is GRIN closed its doors shortly there after. Bionic Commando holds a 70/100 Metacritic score.

Dark Void, a much delayed new IP from the folks at Airtight games was release the first month of 2010. Hoping to capture some of the precious consumers Christmas return dollars Dark Void was to start Capcom’s year with a bang. It didn’t. Dark Void failed to move the expected 2 Million units, by just barely breaking the 500,00 mark. Dark Void holds a Metacritic rating of 59.

Capcom says that they are shifting development focus to other forms of media such as Iphone/Ipad development and downloadable console games. They even mention social games (this farmville crap has got to stop). Capcom is blaming the changing face of the current gaming scene. I disagree, had these games been good, they would have sold. Not being acustomed to poorly received games, Capcom needs to choose better partners. You know, partners that are proven to be good at making a quality product in today’s game scene.

Good games sell, so word of advise…make good games!