Capcom hopes to shorten development cycles
During a financial briefing, Capcom CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto told investors the publisher hopes to cut development times from three or four years to around two and a half years.
As reported by GameInformer, Tsujimoto had to justify the increased manpower - and therefore, expense - Capcom will have to throw at major projects to meet this new schedule.
"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. We will make substantial investments to develop this content," he said.
This more rapid release schedule will allow Capcom to space major franchise entires out more evenly, filling the gaps with DLC.
"For example, we may have five titles for which we can launch sequels over the next two and a half years. In this case, we can even out the introduction dates in order to launch major titles on a regular basis," he said.
COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto noted the publisher is already picking up pace, with the gap between LOst Planet 2 and 3 just two and a half years, as opposed to Resident Evil 5 and 6's three and a half.
"In both cases, the release cycle is shorter than for the previous series title. For Resident Evil 6, we improved efficiency by using a new alignment of internal developers. For Lost Planet 3, we are using an alliance with an overseas development company with the goal of launching this title 2.5 years after the previous title in this series," he said.
"So we have succeeded in greatly reducing the development time compared with prior titles. Overall, we believe that we are making steady progress in shortening development times by efficiently utilizing our own workforce and making effective use of external development companies."
There is one exception to this rule:
"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," Tsujimoto said.
Ninja Theory's take on the Devil May Cry series hits PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January, with a PC version to follow.