With Monster Hunter Wiles breaking the steam record and Resident Evil becoming more popular than ever thanks to the village, thanks to a few great remakes, it’s as if Capcom couldn’t fail. But that wasn’t always the case. Less than a decade later, after a series of critical and commercial flops, Capcom went to his knees. It was losing its way and That audience.
Capcom was struggling with an identity crisis. Resident Evil, who founded the survival horror genre, lost a bite after Resident Evil 4. Another big hitter, the Street Fighter, was on the ropes after an inadequate receiving Street Fighter 5.
But in the darkness there was light. With the game change supported by a powerful new game engine, Capcom has given these beloved series a new lease, bringing Capcom back to the major leagues and kickstarting years of critical and economic success.
Resident Evil has lost its way
2016 was a bad year for Capcom.
The Big Resident Resident Evil game released that year was Umbrella Corps, an online cooperative shooter game where both reviewers and fans were hampered. Meanwhile, Street Fighter 5 met a collective brow raise from longtime fans who couldn’t believe this shiny fighting game was a sequel to Brillation Street Fighter 4.
This was the decline of a series of unforgettable years that Capcom has endured since 2010. Street Fighter was on the ropes thanks to new entries that he didn’t receive much. Capcom’s mainstay was nowhere to be seen, like Devil May Cry. Meanwhile, Monster Hunter, the company’s most popular and successful franchise of the time, was huge in Japan, but struggled to invade the international market.
All of this is far from the Capcom we know today. Since 2017, Capcom has been one of the few major development studios that rarely miss a beat. The Osaka-based company released a stream of hit games from its most famous franchises, winning both sales and praise. We’re talking about Monster Hunter World, Devil May Cry 5, Street Fighter 6, and a series of releases that include the industry-leading remake trio, as well as acclaimed soft reboots of the Resident Evil series. In short, Capcom seems unable to fail these days. .
To achieve this success, it took more than just learning from mistakes. To allow such turnaround, Capcom had to rethink its entire strategy, based on the type of players that targeted the technology they used. For more information about this earthquake shift, Passthecontroller sat down with four of the four Capcom major creatives and found a way that one of the game’s most successful gaming companies stumbled, fell and picked up more than ever.
Capcom was founded in 1979 as a manufacturer of electronic gaming machines or “capsule computers.” Thanks to 2D games like Street Fighter and Megaman, they dominated in the 80s and 90s, making very important jumps into 3D in games like Resident Evil. Between 2000 and 2010, Capcom moved many of its big golden-era franchises to the modern era.
Resident Evil 4 of 2005 is considered by many as a high point for a generation thanks to its ingenious mix of fear and action. But the mix dramatically changed the course of the Resident Evil franchise. At the heart of its core, Resident Evil 4 is a horror game inspired by HP Lovecraft, The Works of John Carpenter and more on Friday the 13th. But scattered between that strand of horror DNA is a very effective moment in a Hollywood action movie.
Unfortunately, in subsequent games this ideal balance of horror and action was lost. In Resident Evil 5 in 2009, hero Chris Redfield punches a car-sized boulder with his naked fist, and the infected enemy is shot in a faster and more furious car chase sequence. The series had lost its identity, but this has been clear to both developers, such as the Resident 4 Resume Director of Resident Evil Bio Hark Director Yasuhiro Ampo, since 1996.
“Through the whole Resident Evil series, we have set a variety of goals, challenges and things we want to try in each game. But this time, many of us feel that the series is a little bit different from what we’re making,” Ampau says.
This confusion in direction leads to games like Resident Evil 6 in 2012. This is a game where you try to eat a cake. To please both action and horror fans, Resident Evil 6 divided the game into six playable characters and three unique storylines. Each section was either horror or action fans, so it never achieved a very important balance between both genres. While dissatisfied fans shared the online disappointment of these new, action-packed Resident Evil games, developers continued to experiment with spinoffs that challenged new realms like online co-ops.
However, this downward trend was not exclusive to Capcom’s survival horror series. Shortly after Resident Evil 4 was released, the company’s street fighter team was flying high too. Street Fighter 4 was an instant hit thanks to its incredible cast, with its unique art style. It was an immediate hit in fighting game tournaments and university dorms. But, like Resident Evil, Capcom was unable to match these highs with the sequel. Compared to its imaginative and full-fledged predecessor, 2016 Street Fighter 5 was criticized for releasing barebone that doesn’t have single-player content and its awful online features. Fans cite a clear lack of Polish and a confused philosophy towards a highly frustrating balance of the overall experience.
However, Street Fighter and Resident Evil were not the only ones struggling. Almost every key franchise had a hard time making the mark. Devil May Cry, a popular heavy metal action game in the studio, had a decline in returns to points Capcom outsourced to the next game in the series, DMC: Devil May Cry in 2013, UK-based Studio Ninja Theory. It became something like a cult title, but the DMC series’ mythology, redesigned protagonist, and fresh take on the sluggish frame rate of 30fps was filled with online fan Vitriol. Perhaps not surprising, after such a calm reception, the series was shelved until further notice.
This slate of misfortune defines Capcom from the early to mid-2010s. Major franchises struggled to replicate past successes, but other titles were placed in cold storage. New games that try to capture the Western market, such as Lost Planet and Asura’s Wrath, have also failed to land with the audience. There were some strange bright spots like Dragon’s Dogma, Devil May Cry director Hideaki Itsuno’s new dark fantasy RPG, but for the most part, Capcom’s focus was everywhere.
It was clear that there was a need for a change.
Street Fighter 5: The Lost Cause
By mid-2010, Capcom had begun to enact many strategic shift changes that completely changed the company’s fate. Such changes had to start small, so the first problem with the business was to create an existing fire. Street Fighter 5 had to be fixed. Capcom then enlisted director Nakayama Takayama and producer Matsumoto Shuhei, and helped pilot the problematic game towards stability.
Neither of the Street Fighter 5 was there from the first floor of Street Fighter 5 development, so while it is impossible to detail why Street Fighter 5 was released in the state, the duo inherited a game that required some substantial fixes to regain the trust of the fans.
“There were definitely some challenges in creating the game, and that was part of the reason why I was brought to the team,” admits Nakayama. “And we were at a development point where we couldn’t really do any big pivots or shifts, so we had to go in the direction we are now and move forward.
These constraints severely limit the extent to which a pair can achieve. So, rather than turning Street Fighter 5 into an S-tier game, much of the work Nakayama did was fixing the most pressing issues in the game and spending time until work began on Street Fighter 6.
“We just didn’t have enough time to address some of the problems and challenges we faced with Street Fighter V,” says Nakayama. “So, with our hands tied behind our backs, we basically had to wait for those ideas to be brought back for the first conceptual stage of Street Fighter 6.
With all this in mind, why did Capcom finish the development of Street Fighter 5 and start working on the sequel right away? If there was so much weight around the developer’s neck, could they not start from scratch? According to Matsumoto, the abandoned Street Fighter 5 was not on the card. “I didn’t feel like “Now, let’s finish Street Fighter 5 and focus on Street Fighter 6.” While working on Street Fighter V, I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with Street Fighter 6 and what I wanted to do with Content 6,” he says.
“Essentially, during the development of Street Fighter 5 I tried various things to see if it worked, and then took what made it work and applied it to Street Fighter 6.
The team treated Street Fighter 5 as a lab, learning from design mistakes and knowing what to do for the sequel. The long-standing process requires careful consideration of all the core aspects of the game, and several important changes have been notified. There have been many updates, starting with basics like netcode and steady improvements to character rebalancing, and going all the way to new characters, V-triggers and even new mechanics like V-Shift.
However, not only did the game go up to acceptable levels, but all of these improvements had far greater goals. Capcom was on a mission to rediscover the joys. At the end of the day, the fighting game should be fun to play, but Street Fighter 5 has become a somewhat frustrating discipline for the master.
“We both found fighting games to be fun. Once you get used to them, it becomes more fun and as long as you have an opponent, it becomes essentially something you can play forever,” Matsumoto says. “However, one of the challenges faced with Street Fighter V is that I felt there was no clear pathway that would help guide players to reach the level they were enjoying and want to continue playing.”
Street Fighters previously tried to make them more accessible by reducing the difficulty level, but this only turned off longtime fans. Instead, the Street Fighter 6 approach was to provide experienced fans with everything they already love about the series, while expanding the tools available to new players.
They reduced their losses in Street Fighter 5 and quickly tried to gain fans in the sequel, but Nakayama and Mashiro knew this would be a shortcut that would not allow Street Fighter to grow in a meaningful way. But by sticking to Street Fighter 5 and using it as a testbed for new ideas, the 2023 Street Fighter 6 was able to launch as one of the most critically envisaged games in the franchise as a whole.
Matsumoto and Nakayama were able to put them in the Street Fighter 5 Arcade Edition and apply the lessons they learned to Street Fighter 6, but it was important that Capcom didn’t repeat these kinds of situations and was forced to overhaul the game again. A major change in strategies to prevent such disasters from occurring was needed. And then there were some important behind the scenes changes unfolding.
Monster Hunter has taken over the world
Around the time the 2016 Street Fighter 5 was released, Capcom underwent an internal restructuring to prepare for a new generation of games. These games will run on the new Re Engine, a company that replaces Capcom’s aging MT framework. But this change was more than just a tool. In addition to engine upgrades, there was a new mandate to ensure Capcom’s games are made for global audiences, not just for existing territory-specific fans.
“It was a few factors that led to it coming together,” says Hideaki Itsuno, former Capcom game director, best known for his work with Devil May Cry. “The engine and all the team changes were given a very clear goal at that point, and we ended up making a game that would reach the global market. (Game) That’s fun for everyone.”
Looking at almost every game on Capcom released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 ERA gives you the feeling that you are all committed to trying to capture an imaginary version of “Western Games Market.” Resident Evil 4, which had a lot of action, was a huge hit. But spinoffs like umbrella-like gun-focused spinoffs and sci-fi shooter-like lost planets all clearly followed trends in Western games in the late 2000s. A few years later, Capcom realized that it needed to create a game that would appeal to everyone, not just fans of traditional Western genres.
“I think we had a clear goal of focusing and not holding back anything,” it says. “Towards creating a good game that reaches people all over the world.”
Itsuno notes that time until 2017 was extremely important. “The changes in the organization and changes in the engine, all of these factors were put together around that time,” he says. When Resident Evil 7 was released that year, it kicked off Capcom’s Renaissance.
No other series embody this new company’s goal for global success as Monster Hunter. There were stubborn fans in the west, but for decades, Monster Hunter was much bigger and much bigger than the rest of the world. This series was never considered to be large only in Japan, but there was a real-world factor as to why this happened.
First of all, Monster Hunter has been a huge success with the Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, moving from PlayStation 2 to PSP. The handheld gaming market has been much stronger in Japan than in the West, as seen with the PSP as well as Nintendo’s DS and recently successful switching. Wide adoption of mobile consoles.
“In Japan 20 years ago, having a network connection wasn’t that easy, and there weren’t a huge number of people playing Monster Hunter online. However, handheld consoles made multiplayer gameplay easier without access to the internet. I consider players to experience the game like this a huge success.
Built on top of the core pillars of a cooperative play, Monster Hunter realized that this aspect is best useful when friends can quickly jump into the hunt together. At the time, there was no better path than a handheld console. Thanks to the Japanese mobile gaming market, it meant that Monster Hunter was originally developed for the local market, even if it wasn’t a deliberate approach.
This created some sort of loop. Monster Hunter Games will become a bestseller primarily in Japan, and in order to keep pace with viewers, Capcom will release content exclusively for Japan, special events exclusively for Japan, further strengthening Monster Hunter as the “Japanese only” brand.
But the reality was that monster hunter did There were fans in the west and Japanese players received exclusive tie-ins and quests, so they were looking at the visone men from the outside. However, as the Western world improves its internet infrastructure and online play becomes essentially a must for most console gamers, Tsujimoto and his team saw the opportunity to launch the most advanced and most accessible monster hunter games ever.
It was released in 2018 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Monster Hunter: World. Instead of the scope of a small, low-reply handheld console, we used soup graphics, larger areas and of course larger monsters to provide the quality action of a large AAA console.
“In general, our approach to globalization of the series and Monster Hunter is tied to the name of the game, not just the themes that have emerged in game design,” Tsujimoto reveals. “The fact that we called it Monster Hunter: the world really nods to this global audience to the fact that we really wanted to truly delve into and experience Monster Hunter for the first time.”
It was also important that Monster Hunter: World did nothing to give the impression that Capcom was prioritizing one market over the other. Monster Hunter: World is released simultaneously around the world and has no exclusive content locked in Japan. This doesn’t mean “comes with re-aligning yourself to achieve the global standards that people expect from titles around the world.”
It wasn’t just to make sure the other regions were getting Monster Hunter. Tsujimoto and co. We’ve delved deeper into other ways to fine-tune the Monster Hunter formula to broaden its appeal with players around the world.
“We have focus tests all over the world. Some of the feedback and opinions we gained during that process really influenced the way we designed the game system and influenced our global success.” Tsujimoto says.
One important change that comes from these playtests was simply indicating how many damages a player would damage when they hit a monster. A little tweak here and there was a drive to the largest height Monster Hunter has ever reached. Previous Monster Hunter Games usually sold around 130,000 to 5 million copies, without releasing or special editions. Monster Hunter: World and Its 2022 follow-up, Monster Hunter Rise, both sold over 20 million copies.
This player’s growth explosion did not happen by chance. Instead of changing the spirit of Monster Hunter to Western tastes, Tsunami and the team have found a way to open up the series’ unique (and certainly dull) nature to a larger audience without making any sacrifices. This approach continues in Monster Hunter Wiles, the latest game in the series.
“The central Monster Hunter is truly an action game, and the sense of accomplishment you get from mastering that action is an important aspect of Monster Hunter,” explains Tsujimoto. “But for new players, it’s really about getting to that point. The step with which we get that sense of accomplishment is what we’re strategizing in terms of designing for new players. For example, in World and Rise, we were meticulous in analyzing where players were stuck, what was difficult to understand, what was wrong, what was the problem, what was getting the player feedback, and what we were doing our own research into it. And all of this kind of knowledge affected how we implemented the new system wildly.”
Resident Evil 7 has begun to turn things around
Monster Hunter had a victory ceremony. The challenge Capcom faced was finding a way to convince the global audience to give them a shot. But it wasn’t a very easy task for every series of the company’s portfolio. As for Resident Evil, the development team had to decide whether the series’ intertwined formula was the winner. Gory Action or Survival Horror. Eventually, Jun Takeuchi, executive producer of Resident Evil, called.
“It was around the time I was working on Resident Evil Apocalypse 1 and 2. I was trying to test different things. I tried different approaches,” recalls Yasuhiro Ampo, director of Resident Evil 2 and 4. “And this is when the R&D team was split into R&D Division 1 and 2. Jun Tauchichi, executive producer of the Resident Evil series, led the R&D Division 1 and set the core orientation needed for the Resident Evil series to return to its origins.
Takeuchi decided that Resident Evil must focus on survival horror as a guided light. This proved to be the right decision. Resident Evil 7 was announced at the PlayStation E3 2016 conference, with a moody first-person trailer filmed, showing the inside of an aging home. I was there when seven Roman numerals appeared and the Resident Evil title continued. The convention hall cried out with excitement.
Of course, there were questions about how Resident Evil can jump to first person. By that point, third person, over the shoulder guns have become synonymous with the series. However, in exchange for moving on to a first-person perspective, it turns out that Resident Evil has regained what it had lost. It scared me once again.
“Jun Tauchichi, executive producer of Resident Evil 7, made it clear that the series is scary and we can’t underestimate how important it is about survival. So he made it clear that Resident Evil 7 will return to its origins. It’s very careful with its survival elements. And, as a basis, we’ll try something new and different,” says Ampoo.
The game was a hit. It may not operate at the same level as Resident Evil 4, but a major change in this direction has enabled a welcoming return to survival horror. Thanks to its unstable and claustrophobic Southern Gothic environment, Resident Evil 7 ranks as one of the most frightening games in the entire series.
However, Capcom was not intending to abandon the third-person perspective, which is key to the series’ DNA. New mainline titles like Resident Evil 7 and 8 will remain in the first person, but Capcom had planned to release third person games through a series of brand new remakes starting with Resident Evil 2.
“It was like, ‘Every righteous person really wants to make this happen.’ So the producer (Yoshiaki) Hirabayashi came up with the slogan: “Well, we’ll do that,” Ampo reveals.
The result is one of the best games in the entire series. Resident Evil 2 remake combines all the action and puzzles that fans expect from the series, allowing Mr. X to continue chase you across the Raccoon City Police Station. Under the direction of Anpo, the Resident Evil 2 remake became the second-best selling Resident Evil game in franchise history.
Naturally, Capcom follows up its incredible success with a remake of Resident Evil 3, another PlayStation 1 game that can clearly benefit from modern reinventions. But following that, Capcom will not remake Resident Evil 4. Why do you touch many people who are considered almost perfect?
Ampo reveals that he was hesitant to work on Resident Evil 4 for sure. “Like you said, (Resident Evil 4) was a title that still enjoyed popularity. So there was a lot of internal debate that maybe it wasn’t a good idea. You might not need a Resident Evil 4 remake, especially since Resident Evil 4 is a very beloved game. People might be very vocal about their discomfort if the remake is wrong.”
But despite initial hesitation, the team pushed through with a remake, and the results speak for itself. Resident Evil 4 remake was another genuine hit. Much of its success came down to the biggest changes that focused on fine-tuning the action horror ratio to achieve Takeuchi’s goal of keeping the series true to its survival horror roots. And some of the original game’s Cantier elements have been replaced by dark tones with a mood that maintains heart-warming action hero moments.
Around the same time as the rediscovery of Resident Evil’s horror core, longtime devil may-cry director Heidi Kischno had a similar epiphany. After a brief stay in the RPG world with Dragon’s Doctrine, Shuno saw the action genre beginning to soften to appeal to a more casual audience. And when the chance to direct Devil Mary Cry arrived, Isno saw the opportunity to challenge an audience in genres that he felt needed a good butt kick. He does so in the epic way achieved by leveraging the most powerful game engine ever.
The reason behind the change
“I felt that the main trend in action games was making action games that are very kind,” he admits. “Maybe for me, I’m a little too kind to the player and I’m lending too much help to the player and becoming too much of a favorite.”
Itsuno began with the second game in the series, taking over the duties of directors in Devil May Cry, and then maintained all new iterations, except for the DMC in Ninja Theory. Following the release of Devil May Rice 4 in 2008, it will take almost 11 years for Isano to direct another Devil May Cry game. However, when he finally returned, he oversaw one of the most critical and financially successful games in the entire franchise.
Ten years from the franchise, I gave it time to figure out where I wanted to film the series. More importantly, he will return with Arsenal, a new technology. “When it comes to technology, it didn’t just improve much when working on series in a row,” says Ithuno. “If you have a wide range of time frames, (technology) changes dramatically.”
This vision coincided with the launch of Capcom’s new RE engine. It’s the engine that most Capcom games run today. Replacing everything from Dead Rising to Monster Hunter World, the main outcome of the RE engine was the handling of photorealistic assets. This gave Capcom’s development teams access to a higher level of visual fidelity than ever before. It also makes you feel much more offended than your predecessor, so if something isn’t working, you can easily implement the changes.
Ampo tells us the origins of the re-engine. “The original concept of RE engines was to allow for a development environment that would help make things faster and less stressful. As it is an internal development engine, you can ask internally when you need additional tools.
This also allowed Capcom developers to try and error the choice of development on the fly. This proved essential for Isano, whose goal is to make the “coolest” action game of all time. This meant a lot of trial and error to make sure everything from the look of the game to the way it was played was as smooth and stylish as possible. The combination of RE Engine’s rapid development tools and photorealistic features allowed Itsuno to enhance the pure style of Devil May Cry.
“Devil May Cry is a franchise that leads to being cool,” it says. “That’s what it’s like to be a franchise. It’s about being cool. Since taking over the series from Devil May Cry 3, I’ve thought that as a person, I’m cool all through life. Everything I saw in TV, movies, comics I read, sports experiences I’ve experienced, everything I think the game is.”
The Golden Age of the New Capcom
Since 2017, Capcom has released Game of the Year contenders almost every year. In an age where major studios struggle to find consistency, Capcom’s rave reviews of 10 games within a decade are the major outliers. That trend appears to only continue with Monster Hunter Wilds.
Focusing on the central goal of creating a globally engaging game, everything was built with a technically sophisticated engine that could power a variety of genres, proven to be an unprecedented formula for success. Today’s Capcom allows you to elegantly switch from laser-centric fighting games to tight survival horror, to vast open-world action RPGs without missing a beat.
What’s even more impressive is that Capcom’s mission to create global mainstream games has almost never diluted the game. Instead, Capcom seems to have found the ultimate balance of staying true to itself, whether it’s Resident Evil’s pure survival horror, the competitive spirit of Street Fighters, or the unique combat system of Monster Hunter.
Many Capcom contemporaries have noticed that Capcom is just a decade ago. But for Capcom, changes made over the past decade have brought about a new golden age with no signs of slowing down. Capcom may have fallen, but it has risen more than ever.
When asked if they believed this was the golden age of the new Capcom, the director greatly agreed. Nakayama of Street Fighter said, “It’s a very exciting time to be at Capcom right now. Many of us can be excited about what we’re working on and focus on what we find fun. So, yes, the Golden Age may be one interpretation of that.”
The Monster Hunter Tsunami states, “Capcom is experiencing a golden age, and now we have to do everything we can to ensure this continues for another year, another year, and another year each year. We hope we can expand as much as possible, if possible.”
Matt Kim is Passthecontroller’s senior feature editor.
