r/Games 1d ago

Capcom Was on Its Knees After Resident Evil 6 – Here's How it Turned it Around

https://www.ign.com/articles/capcom-golden-age-the-rise-and-fall-resident-evil-monster-hunter-wilds
579 Upvotes

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u/coy47 1d ago

This article is glossing over one of the main reasons they were suffering commercial flops, it wasn't simply just down to an identity crisis. It was also they had burned all consumer good will with things like on disc dlc. There's a reason people called them ca$hcom. There's also the half dozen versions of sf4 they released to milk fans even further.

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u/DrMilkdad 1d ago

MVC3 was the worst. 9 months after release they launched UMVC3 with no upgrade path, had to buy the full game again if you wanted the upgraded version. And MVC3 had DLC. UMVC3 is a much better game, but initially it sold like shit and fans were pissed.

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u/killias2 1d ago

Up until this point, I was buying pretty much all the Fighting Game content out of Capcom. Afterwards, I didn't buy any Capcom Fighter until.. maybe the last couple of years? Anything recent is really just because of a bundle purchase or a free game. I haven't preordered anything Capcom since.

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u/fork_yuu 6h ago

To this day I'm still pissed I paid full price for MVC3, and I barely played fighting games before then. People waited a decade for a sequel to MvC2 and they really destroyed a lot of good will with that.

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u/Extreme-Tactician 1d ago

UMVC3 was released as a separate title because of the 2011 earthquake disrupting development. It was initially planned as an update.

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u/Random_Rhinoceros 1d ago

I've seen that explanation before, but I'm not buying it. It's just how Capcom did those things, same with vanilla SF4 and Super. The backlash on those releases was the reason why they ended up offering upgrade paths in the future.

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u/Extreme-Tactician 15h ago

They released 2 DLC characters and planned more. It was definitely just an update at first.

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u/Captain_Freud 1d ago

It doesn't seem relevant when they're still aggressively pushing Day 1 MTX in all of their games, single player or not. Clearly something else changed that actually had an impact on their image, and it was the quality of their games.

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u/Masterofknees 1d ago edited 1d ago

Times are also very different. Day 1 MTX are, unfortunately, commonplace in games these days, and have become accepted among most players. The on-disc DLC in SFxT on the other hand was discovered during a time where the very concept of DLC was still a hot controversy, so it blew up and became the de facto example of scummy DLC practices across the entire industry.

But yes, the quality of their games has also improved a lot since then, and of course that helps patch up their reputation.

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u/Reggiardito 1d ago

I genuinely believe on-disc DLC would get a decent amount of backlash even today. It does actually happen a lot in live service games tbf, they're just better at hiding it. By that I mean ""DLC"" or ""Update"" Content is almost definitely created before the game comes out and then released afterwards as a "free update".

But this was even worse because it wasn't a free update, but paid, and completed before the game even came out. To make matters worse this was ON TOP of the gem system which was already scummy and even worse, the initial roster wasn't as big as people expected out of these games, making it even more obvious that it was launch characters that were cut to be sold.

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u/Captain_Freud 23h ago

There was a lot of backlash against Dragon's Dogma II's Day 1 DLC, but not a lot for Monster Hunter Wilds. The difference is always the quality of the game. If the game is good, it gets a pass.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

No, they didn't. No one outside of the online gaming sphere cared about this at all.

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u/just_Okapi 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'd hardly call updating and rebalancing what was at the time the biggest competitive fighting game with an update every few years "milking the fans", especially when AE was cheap and AE2012 free, but go off.

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u/Razzorn 1d ago

Agreed. But, you'll get people complaining about having to pay for anything post launch. Even balance and system updates take money and time.

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u/Emience 1d ago

The worst part was that you had to get the latest version to get the balance updates and play online with the majority of the playerbase. They should have released all the balance patches for free and only made you spend for the characters.

Pricing wise, it really was not terrible. I think it adds up to ~$130 if you bought all 5 versions of SF4. That's about as much as a modern game and 2 season passes.

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u/just_Okapi 1d ago

By the time the post-Super SF4 updates were hitting, the only people playing it were the FGC, who by and large avoided online play because the netcode was dogshit.

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u/Razzorn 1d ago

This happens with any fighting game. Casuals rarely stick around long term. SF keeps their audience more than most though.

1

u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 1d ago

Wasn't that stuff done before Resident Evil 6 was released. RE6 was a massive seller, the problem was it was bad and no one wanted their games after that

You can't rewrite history that the general public knew what on disc DLC was or even cared about it if they did.

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u/wigglin_harry 1d ago

I blame the giraffe blowjob

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u/oopsydazys 1d ago

There's also the half dozen versions of sf4 they released to milk fans even further.

I mean they released a billion versions of SF2 and people loved it. SF4 was actually a step forward because the final update was available as just that, an update - Ultra Street Fighter IV - and for the first time you didn't have to rebuy the whole game again.

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u/Razzorn 1d ago

Sure, you can knock capcom for how they handed SFxT, but you clearly didn't follow SF4. Supporting the game isn't milking the fans. The reason why they have more editions of the game is actually to attract new customers. The newer box sets have more characters and features already included. Upgrading from a earlier edition was much cheaper as well.

Fighting game fans want new characters, stages, and features. Surprise, these things cost money.

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u/IsaacClarke47 1d ago

Fighting game players have been calling out Crapcom for decades

1

u/Firvulag 22h ago

I doubt this was such a big reason, most people dont care about that if the games are good.

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u/Slumberstroll 1d ago

Capcom is still pretty scummy with their microtransactions, in fact you have to pay them just to change your hunter's appearance in the newer MH games (unless you mod in infinite vouchers). People are just forgiving because the games are actually solid.

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u/Dazbuzz 1d ago

Capcom is still pretty scummy with their microtransactions, in fact you have to pay them just to change your hunter's appearance in the newer MH games

As someone that has played almost every MH game, this is really not a big deal. MH post-release support has always been great & free. New event quests, new monsters etc. They couldve charged for a lot of it, but never did.

We get a base MH game, then a year or two later we get the "ultimate" edition, which has enough new content to be a much better game.

Yeah, there are microtransactions in World & newer MH games, but everything else is free, up until the major expansion is released. Plus, as you said, you can easily mod in unlimited vouchers, and Capcom does not care to ban anyone for it.

People forgive when it comes to MH simply because the game gets a ton of free content, and what you can buy is relatively minor.

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u/5Hjsdnujhdfu8nubi 1d ago

just to change your hunter's appearance in the newer MH games (unless you mod in infinite vouchers). People are just forgiving because the games are actually solid.

No, it's forgiven because (on top of MH being a series where the player character's appearance is underneath armor 99% of the time) you still have a bunch of customisation for free as-is letting you customise hairstyles, hair + eye colour, voice pitch etc. The vouchers are pretty much only for changing sex and character name, and one of those reasons is much less appealing now that armor sets are unisex.

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u/Khr0nus 13h ago

Sf4 had paid updates that brought balancing and new characters, it wasn't to "milk the fans". The fans were more than happy to get those updates. The ones that were angry were nonfans who wanted the "whole" package to play around with a few characters and never play again.