Capcom going company-wide with social, mobile development

Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono and Monster Hunter Frontier producer Kazunori Sugiura have been placed at the head of a new initiative to drive social and mobile development at Capcom.

"Capcom has decided to look at the social-game field from the scope of the entire company. Instead of framing it in its own section like consoles or mobile games, it's something that all of Capcom development is involved with," Ono said in the latest Famitsu, as translated by 1UP.

"When it came to be decided who would lead this effort, the baton went to myself since I had a great deal of experience with game communities and to Kazunori Sugiura due to the knowledge he learned about customer service through his experience with Monster Hunter Frontier."

Capcom's sub-label Beeline Interactive has been behind some of the company's mobile and social successes so far - The Smurfs Village has been a massive earner internationally, while a recent Resident Evil social game has netted 1 million registrants.

"Capcom's worked on several types of mobile content in the past. Some of it has succeeded, some hasn't, but what we've learned through this is that while the audience that goes for social games overlaps a bit with the audience Capcom's traditionally aimed for with its console titles, it's basically a different group of people," Ono said.

"With that in mind, we're seeking to use the titles and content we've cultivated up to now to knock on the door of social gaming. We want to use what we have already, and there will be some name recognition among social gamers for our titles, though naturally we'll have to think about original content in the future as well."