News
Capcom Cancels Multiple Games, Shifts Focus To In-House Development
Lately, Capcom has been outsourcing the development of many of their games to third parties. Slant Six did Operation Raccoon City, Ninja Theory had DmC: Devil May Cry, Lost Planet 3 is coming from Spark Unlimited, etc. Unfortunately, Capcom isn’t very happy with how these games have been performing. The company confirmed a “special loss” of ¥7.2 bn ($73.3 MM) after cancelling multiple titles that were in development at third party studios. They’re blaming the significant loss on “excessive outsourcing” of low quality games, slow digital expansion, and poor marketing.
Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 6 fell way short of expectations; DmC sold 1.1 million units of Capcom’s 2 million target, and RE6 performed even worse (relative to expectations), after selling over 2 million less copies than what they expected. Ouch.
The solution? Capcom wants to shift their focus to develop new installments in more of their franchises in-house. On the positive side, this means we’ll see more Capcom-developed Resident Evil games. Resident Evil 6 notwithstanding, those tend to be of a higher quality. On the less positive side, we probably won’t be seeing another Devil May Cry game from Ninja Theory.
That’s too bad, because my time with DmC was the most fun I’ve had with the series so far.
On top of relying less on other studios, Capcom is going to boost their digital strategies — maybe we’ll see a Outbreak game on XBLA after all — and “enhance co-ordination between marketing and development divisions.” Basically, that translates to “work on our poor marketing.”
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All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
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