The epic bombing of Capcom's Bionic Commando, by Swedish developer GRIN, has prompted Capcom to change its approach to dealing with western developers, saying it will not had over new IPs to western developers.
Bionic Commando, a modern reboot of the NES classic (the disc game, not the XBLA one, 'Rearmed'), shifted just 27,000 copies in its first month on sale in the US, which "demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new [titles] to overseas companies," said Capcom.
Bionic Commando
Official trailer
1:56Launch trailer
Bionic Commando
Official trailer
1:56Launch trailer
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The game didn't do too well in reviews either, as you can see here. "There's no polish, no real style, and barely any fun for the first couple of hours," said our friends at XBW360.
As a result, the firm said: "We plan to develop new titles primarily in Japan," with overseas studios only to deal with "well-established characters and universal themes", according to Gamasutra.
Capcom says it won't stop working with overseas studios because: "We cannot develop a sufficient number of titles without using the resources of these companies. This is why we plan to continue using these alliances."
"We are considering ways to separate the roles of activities in Japan and overseas," it added.
Seems odd. Risk them messing up an established franchise rather than blaming the inherent risk that comes with a new IP? I guess they're comfortable that a franchise name alone will sell it, regardless of whether the product is actually good or not.
What! They want licensed IP's to be made not by the creators crazy but I still have hope then for an Onimusha game open world would be nice but only one no more! Anyway GRIN didn't make good games they had there chance and now have been shut down. But this outsourcing established IP's to western developers has a 50:50 chance. So i'll wait and see!
Seems odd. Risk them messing up an established franchise rather than blaming the inherent risk that comes with a new IP? I guess they're comfortable that a franchise name alone will sell it, regardless of whether the product is actually good or not.
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