Salnax on 14 June 2017
I don't think Capcom is doing that badly, at least over the course of the past few years.
Focusing on their Best-Selling series:
- Ace Attorney seems to have found a comfy niche as a retail series in Japan and download-only elsewhere. At very least, its sales haven't declined much since the DS era.
- Breath of Fire - Has not been a notable series since the Dreamcast was relevant. The horrid mobile title is tragic, but not much else.
- Dead Rising - The fourth game was down from the previous three. I guess that Capcom Vancouver will have to shift focus to another franchise. This series has mostly been their product since DR2 anyway.
- Devil May Cry - Has been on hiatus, but based on the director's comments and the rereleases of the entire franchise in the HD Collection and 8th gen updates, it seems likely that a fifth proper game is in the works.
- Marvel vs Capcom - A bit hard to figure out, since Infinite seems to be taking some risks. It could benefit from being more accessible and tying itself to the most popular film franchise of recent years, or it could suffer by angering its fanbase. Notably, Capcom seems to be shaping this game's release to meet criticisms of Street Fighter V. Note that Mega Man has at least three reps in this game.
- Mega Man - This entire franchise has obviously fallen out of favor since Keiji Inafune left Capcom, but the series was on the verge of becoming niche before that. The best sellers in the series since X5 have been the Battle Network spinoffs on the GBA. The 2004 Anniversary Collection outsold half of the games included in it, so the recent Legacy Collection makes sense.
- Monster Hunter is in a healthy position. With XX coming out for Switch this summer and World coming early next year, it's a good way for Capcom to see if the series can find more ground in Western and Home Console markets. If they can't, then it should be fairly easy for them to work Worlds into a Switch game, the same way they ported the first three games from the PS2 and Wii to the PSP. The only problem on the horizon is figuring out whether enough 3DS owners move to the Switch.
- Resident Evil - RE7 did not have the best sales in the series, and slightly underperformed, but Capcom was optimistic about its success a few months after launch, expecting 10 million sales lifetime. Even if they fail to meet that mark, RE7 seems to have been cheaper to develop, meaning Capcom is back on track for this series. The remasters of classic titles has generally been successful.
- Street Fighter is probably where Capcom has done the worst these past few years. Even if we ignore the problems of console exclusivity, people just aren't as interested in SFV as they were in SFIV. They'll only fraction as many copies lifetime.
TLDR - In recent years, Capcom has messed up Street Fighter and Dead Rising, salvaged Resident Evil, and generally done business as usual for many of their series, including their de facto flagship series.
