Darkstalkers revival will we ever see one?

[Majin-Tenshinhan]

hunter_alien said:

Majin-Tenshinhan said:

OK, let me rephrase. Resident Evil 7 didn't lose money, however, it continuously fell short of expectations, because Capcom always have unrealistic expectations. They consistently expect 2 million copies for games that are never, ever going to reach those numbers - Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, Dead Rising 4 - and unfortunately Resdeint Evil 7 is no exception of optimistic expectations on Capcom's side.

While the game has done well, Capcom's stated expectation was for it to ship 4 million copies by March 2017. It ended up at 3,5 million copied shipped, more than 10% below their expectation.

Once again, Capcom stated a new goal, this time for 2 million additional copies to be shipped by March 2018. Once we hit March 2018, it had ended up selling 5,1 million copies overall - 1,6 million copies since last check-in, this time 20% short of expectations.

Capcom are now stating they're expecting lifetime sales of this title to exceed 10 million copies - higher than any previous Resident Evil title has, and for the game to double its sales from over a year after its release.

So, I apologise for saying it put them in the red - it didn't. But I will instead shift it to say what I should have said from the very start, which is to use it as a strongly supporting factor in painting how unrealistic Capcom's expectations are, have been, and will likely continue to be.

Resident Evil 7 isn't the only title falling short of their stated expectation, Street Fighter 5, Dead Rising 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite all did this as well. A time-windowed expectation not being met is a bad thing for the company, because it means the game didn't do as well as they were expecting when they set its development and marketing budget. While they might not be losing money on Resident Evil 7 or Street Fighter 5 since they eventually reached the goals, albeit later than expected, they are not generating the profit they were supposed to given their budget. DR4 and MvCI, on the other hand, are just completely unrealistic and definitely lost quite a bit of money.

Source for 4 million expectation: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/resident-evil-7-and-dead-rising-4-sales-projection/1100-6444883/
Source for 3,5 million copies shipped: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-27-resident-evil-7-sales-top-3-5m-worldwide
Source for 2 million additional copies: https://www.vg247.com/2017/10/18/resident-evil-7-has-reached-capcoms-target-of-4-million-units-shipped/
Source for 5,1 million copies shipped: http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/news/html/e180406.html

There is no arguing that. I often feel that some of the stakeholders still believe that Capcom has the same clout it did during the 5th/6th generation and they predict based on that. They still have a long way to go until they reach those levels and this is mostly down to the very mediocre performance they had during the 7th generation and the hard transition they had into this one.

And yes expecting 10 million LT sales (even with a full-fledged Switch port) for RE7 would be pretty much impossible to meat, and its number that puts way to much pressure on RE2 Remake.

You're probably right, and while Capcom have an IP library that's strong enough where you could reasonably expect much form them, their numbers outside of Monster Hunter just do not back up these expectations. They should take a page from Nintendo's book where it comes to budget managements, and do some smaller projects that will turn a healthy profit at 500k instead of trying to force each of their games to be 2 million at least or not worth doing. Devil May Cry 5 has the same expectation now, and while it has a much more realistic shot of hitting that target than Dead Rising 4 or Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite did, it's still very far from a sure thing, specially with how much of the DmC aesthetic they seem to have maintained.