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Capcom has halved its profit forecast for financial year 2013 from £43.4 million to £19.4 million, blaming some of it on what it has called “excessive outsourcing”.
A note released to investors warns of a “special loss” as a result of the publisher’s “strict review of games under development”.
Capcom has cut sales forecasts for Resident Evil 6 from 5 million to 4.9 million, a game the firm had originally hoped would sell 7 million copies. Likewise, DmC sales estimates have been cut from 1.2 to 1.15 million, again, down from an original two million copies.
Reasons for the firm’s financial revisions have been placed on a “delayed response to the expanding digital contents market”, “insufficient coordination between the marketing and the game development divisions in overseas markets”, and a “decline in quality due to excessive outsourcing”.
Whilst DmC hasn’t sold what Capcom had hoped, it’s hard to argue that this is a result of lackluster reviews – the game holds a Metacritic of 86.
In response, Capcom intends to carry out “countermeasures” which include offering more DLC and bringing research and development back in-house.
A number of outsourced projects – which are said to no longer be compatible with the current business strategy – have also been cancelled, resulting in a £48.1 million special loss.
Lost Planet 3 is a high profile outsourced game from Spark Unlimited. Its release was recently pushed back to August. It will be interesting to see how the game is treated by Capcom given its new stance on outsourced projects.
Source: Capcom Investor Relations
