Resident Evil 6 and Dragon’s Dogma sales boost Capcom’s revenue

By: Musa Afridi

  |   November 1st, 2012   |  

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The publisher sees a half-year profit of £32-million as the two games help take the total revenue earned to £354-million; a massive increase from the same period last year.

When it comes to Japan there are a number of large publishers with huge titles and franchises present in their portfolio; from Kojima Productions and the Metal Gear series, to Konami and Namco Bandai, there is no shortage of talent and industry leaders. However, the biggest name from the region has to be Capcom, which has some of the most well-known franchises under its belt.

Street Fighter, Dead Rising and a host of other titles have established Capcom as one of ‘the’ publishers in the video game industry but their biggest franchise has to be the Resident Evil series. The long running zombie survival-horror series saw a change in direction with Resident Evil 5 as it adopted a more action-oriented approach. That was only taken a step further when it laid an even higher emphasis on action with Resident Evil 6.

The move divided fans of the series as they believed that the game had lost its roots with the gun shooting zombies and lack of emphasis on survival. However, there were those who enjoyed the experience as well.

At the same time, Capcom’s new IP, Dragon’s Dogma, saw the publisher record its highest figures for the period in years. At the same time, other titles such as Resident Evil: Outbreak Survive and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City also helped increase the revenue the series was earning.

All in all the net revenue figure of $570-million means that this year’s figure was no less than 355% higher than the same figure for the previous year. Capcom shipped a total of 4.5-milllion units of Resident Evil 6 by October 4^th and despite the slow sales following an explosive first week, the game is still in the top ten when it comes to the sales charts.

However, Capcom has also been branded as a publisher that tends to churn out near identical iterations of the same product and is slowly incurring seeing fan perception change about them. The studio recently announced a free DLC for Resident Evil 6, which has been released, and added a number of new features to the game as well.

Capcom will be hoping that the second half financial report makes as good reading as the first half’s as it gears up for the crucial holiday season. Whether or not the publisher can maintain its momentum remains to be seen.

But what about the readers; is Capcom on its way to a record setting year or is the second half performance going to disappoint? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.