Capcom wants to make more of its games in-house to improve the quality of its releases, and intends to hire 1,000 developers over the next 10 years to support that goal.
The publisher has outsourced a considerable portion of its games in recent years, allowing Western developers to handle some of its biggest franchises. It's partnered with Spark Unlimited (Turning Point) on Lost Planet 3 (pictured), and brought in Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword) to handle its Devil May Cry reboot.
A number of those outsourced projects have been panned by critics, such as Grin's Bionic Commando reboot and Slant Six Games' Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, though the latter went on to sell over 2.1 million units worldwide.
The publisher has also received criticism recently on the quality of Resident Evil 6, an internally-developed title, which reviewers have slammed for veering too far away from the franchise's roots, and for trying to please as many people as possible.
Capcom told investors last week that it will improve the quality of its games by creating a larger percentage of its projects internally. In order to accomplish that goal, it will add another 1,000 workers to its current team of 1,500 developers.
The publisher will focus on beefing up its content development groups for console game development, while also expanding its mobile and PC online divisions. It does not expect significant changes in its development budget, as Capcom will allocate expenditures away from outsourced projects to its internal team.
Wow, this is great news. Could it be that Capcom is actually learning that outsourcing it's beloved franchises and trying to westernize it's games as much as possible is actually not really doing it any favors with the western market? It's nice to see a company actually learn from it's mistakes.
My read is that they're shying away from triple-A and building up social and mobile internally. There's no way they just suddenly had a revelation that they could make western-focused console games on their own now, especially after the RE6 reviews. Then again, this is Capcom we're talking about...
I like this move, personally. Capcoms in house games are far better games. I'd also add that I think people lowering RE6's review score because it wasn't the game they expected is biased and unfair. Shouldn't games be reviewed on their content and not be tied to the developers history. If an Indy developer made the exact same game those reviewers would probably give it 9.5's.
