Capcom president â??reluctant to invest westâ??

The president of one of the world’s biggest publishers has revealed his unwillingness to place complete faith in western studios.

Haruhiro Tsujimoto cited the poor performance of Dark Void and Bionic Commando as the basis of Capcom’s decision to only partner with western studios for less risky projects.

“As a group, the new titles where development was led from abroad didn’t do so well,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

Tsujimoto revealed that the publisher would still employ overseas developers, but only for sequels or new versions of existing games.

The Financial Times report (which registered members can read here) claims that Dark Void sold 520,000 copies against an original target of 2 million.

Bionic Commando, meanwhile, sold 700,000 copies compared to Capcom’s original target of 1.5 million.

Both titles were developed in the west. Dark Void was built by Seattle-based Airtight Games, while Bionic Commando was developed by fallen Swedish outfit GRIN.

Tsujimoto said that, though these new IPs failed to meet internal targets, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix – also developed in the west – performed well.

Capcom has in the past demonstrated a on/off relationship with western studios.

Last year the group said it was excited by the “idea of having external, especially western development teams, on games that have been primarily Capcom Japan intellectual properties”.

Several months later the group said such partnership had “demonstrated the difficulty” of outsourcing projects to thirdparties outside of its native Japan.

Keiji Inafune – the veteran Capcom designer responsible for some of the publisher’s most iconic brands – was recently promoted to a new role overlooking the firm’s global output.

The Mega Man creator raised eyebrows at last year’s Tokyo Game Show by openly stating that “Japan is dead” as a modern game development region.