Their eSports revenue is growing but still losing Capcom money
Capcom is continuing their roll of success with another greatly profitable year, and they’re looking to do even more in the future.
The company’s latest financial report not only revealed Street Fighter 6’s increasing sales, but also a lot more including which brands they’re looking at growing.
Outside of Nintendo, Capcom owns probably the largest amount of iconic and recognizable video game IP out of any developer in the world though their focus could be considered a bit narrow in past years.
To try and fix that / broaden their horizons, the company included a section in their financial report to talk about nurturing other brands.
That includes seven franchises in particular Capcom is looking to capitalize on with new IP, sequels, ports and more support.
Those are Mega Man, Devil May Cry, Onimusha, Dead Rising, Ace Attorney, Dragon’s Dogma and Okami.
As our headline suggests, you’ve probably noticed there’s no fighting games included in that bunch.
There is a pretty good reason that Street Fighter isn’t listed because it’s already considered one of their flagship franchises alongside Resident Evil and Monster Hunter.
The fighting game series is Capcom’s third-best selling behind those other two at 59 million games with Street Fighter 6 itself now at 6.71 million copies sold, so it seems they don’t feel Ryu needs the extra support.
This does make it sound, however, that they’re not focusing much on expanding their fighting game offerings beyond Street Fighter right now.
Despite putting out the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, a new MvC game is looking less likely for the near future with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls on the way to fill that void.
That also may dash the hopes of anyone still trying to hold out for a new Darkstalkers, Power Stone or Rival Schools entry as well as any other fighter they own.
There of course has been a lot of speculation regarding the possibility of something like Capcom vs. SNK 3, but not being included here doesn’t mean it won’t happen since they probably wouldn’t want to give away that they’re working on it early in a financial report.
You could try to say the same for their other fighters as well, though, it is a bit odd that fighting games aren’t part of this discussion at all.
Street Fighter 6 has been a big success for Capcom, especially in Japan, where it’s even outselling Monster Hunter Wilds in the past few quarters, so you’d think they may want to strike more while the iron is hot.
It just seems we’ll be left waiting to see if their strategy on that front involves anything beyond Street Fighter.
As for other connections, the decision to make Capcom Cup 12 a pay-per-view event may have helped their eSports division a decent amount, but it’s still not profitable.
Capcom’s eSports and media went from losing 1.2 billion yen ($7.6 million USD) in last year’s third quarter to losing 600,000 million yen ($3.8 million), so it’ll be interesting to see what other potential avenues the company attempts to use to bring that division into the black if it’s possible to do so at all.
Street Fighter 6 does have another major update coming this month with the release of Ingrid, and we should be learning more about Season 4 and the future shortly after that.