If there’s one thing that justifies a gamer’s nostalgia, it’s the announcement of a remake of one of their old favourites. Old fans of Devil May Cry and Resident Evil may just get to enjoy this feeling, because Capcom has announced that one of the focuses of future business at the company will be the creation and release of HD remakes of more classic games on the digital market.
This follows the success of Resident Evil HD, a remake of the Gamecube version of the classic survival-horror that exceeded all of Capcom’s sales targets, becoming the fastest selling digital title in the company’s history in the West. Capcom has announced an upcoming HD re-master of Devil May Cry 4, and there are even rumours in the pipeline of a remake of Resident Evil Zero.
In their recent financial Q&A, Capcom stated that the advent of digital downloads, combined with the popularity of the Resident Evil remake, has created a great deal of demand for these games. They are aiming for ‘aggressive digital download sales activities’, partly as a result of the decline in gaming stores in the West, which would make it more difficult to sell hard copies of any future remakes. In other words, Capcom are keen to make a winning streak of their recent success by making more classic titles available to gamers as the digital marketplace continues to expand.
Other announcements in the Q&A included the intention to continue developing smartphone games via Beeline, in order to build relations with casual games and ultimately make them ‘buyers of our (Capcom’s) core games’. Capcom is also hoping that the recent reorganisation of their development operations will reduce the development time for their core games, though they also admitted that games for the current console generation generally require larger development teams.