Citing disappointment with Bionic Commando, Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto said that he has reevaluated the role Western developers will play in the company’s games. At a recent Q&A session he said:
Our experience with Bionic Commando has demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new title to overseas companies. We are considering ways to separate the roles of activities in Japan and overseas. We plan to develop new titles primarily in Japan. Overseas companies may be used mostly to develop titles for existing game series with well-established characters and universal themes. Overseas companies will also handle certain parts and/or lineups of such games.
Japan is a pretty xenophobic culture (though that’s changing somewhat with the younger generation) so I’m not at all surprised by these comments. Having said that, there are a number of Eastern-Western partnerships that have worked well. In Capcom’s case, Bionic Commando has become too important if it’s going to affect the company’s future development strategies. While I generally prefer games developed in Japan, I think it would be foolish not to explore true collaborative efforts that combine the best of both regions.
What do you think of Tsujimoto-san’s stance on Western developers?
I really don't see what he is saying to be asinine. It may be blunt, but a good business person is often blunt.
"If you want something done right, do it yourself…..or don't take the lowest bid"
@Bionic Commandon
I was damn near heartbroken when I heard this game was utter garbage. It was the one Capcom game I was looking forward to this year over all the other titles they were giving us. The graphics and gameplay from the trailers looked like it was going to be a great puzzle solver, action game. That said, it is $20 at Bestbuy this week….might have to go get it.
@Smartguy It's too general. The company shouldn't dismiss all Western developers mostly based on BC. It just needs to pick better partners.
Huh? Does that mean games like Lost Planet will start getting made outside of Japan? That doesn't sound like a good idea.
@Ray
I agree with that. I am just looking at his statement from the point of view that perhaps he wasn't implying that western devs aren't worthy of doing a first run franchise. I really think Capcom could have made it work with better quality control measures. Example: Blizzard canning the Ghost team and finally the game. Blizzard is a rare exception (unfortunately) that realizes its brand name carries with it an inherent amount of goodwill.
The thing about Bionic Commando is that the controls were not very intuitive. So once you learned them, you couldn't put the game down and go play something else, because once you came back to it it was like having to start over again. This is why I stopped playing the game. The original was probably my favorite NES game though, so I may have been willing to tolerate more out of Grin's version of the game than most people.