It seems whenever Capcom is in the news, it’s either their announcement of a new mobile game, the company’s financial troubles or fans spewing hate and wishing the company would tank. However this time its a bit different. In a press release sent out by Haruhiro Tsujimoto, President and COO of Capcom, the developer/publisher will be investing 8 billion yen (that’s about $80 million in US currency)in to two R&D buildings. Tsujimoto gives the following reason as to why Capcom is investing in new buildings:
To succeed in this challenging environment, Capcom has been focusing resources on strategic and growing areas under a policy of selection and concentration in order to operate with speed and flexibility. Constructing these new R&D buildings will make game development operations more efficient by centralizing these operations and upgrading speed and control. Another goal is to improve quality while holding down development expenses by accumulating development technologies and other knowledge. To accomplish this goal, Capcom plans to hire about 100 developers every year, mostly new graduates, and raise the share of game development work that is performed internally. By March 2022, Capcom plans to have a workforce of 2,500 developers. Capcom believes that these actions will give the company a competitive advantage due to the more powerful development capabilities in the rapidly growing mobile content and PC online games markets.
This sounds like reinforcement what Capcom has said in the past about their games being handled by Western developers. In which Capcom will handle all of their IPs (Mega Man, Resident Evil, Street Fighter etc etc) in house and new IPs handled by the Western studios that they own. Speaking of in house development, with these two new buildings, it seems Capcom is getting serious about that as each of the buildings will house motion capture rooms and studios to capture and produce sound effects, both of which Capcom usually outsource.
As great as that sounds, company expansions are always great, there is one question that is lingering: where did they get the money from? Last year it was reported that Capcom only had 15 billion yen in the bank ($153 million in US currency). You would think that instead of buying land to build new buildings is on the lower end of trying to keep a company afloat. Perhaps they struck a deal with someone? There is a rumor going around that has Capcom and Chinese investment holding company and owner of Riot Games Tencent, stuck a deal. It is not clear if Tencent is investing in Capcom or they have bought Capcom out completely, just rumors and speculations. We won’t know the full story or what financial shape Capcom is in until they announce the fiscal year 2013 results next month on the 8th and 9th.
Editor’s note: Slight correction, the amount invested was 8 billion yen not the previously stated 2.5 billion. Word of advice, do not write up news at one in the morning and half asleep.
Source: Capcom
