Capcom planning “aggressive” sales campaign for Resident Evil 7 after profits decline, more focus on VR

By Sherif Saed

The most recent financial results from Capcom do not show a lot of growth, but promise some exciting changes.

Capcom has released the results for the nine month period ending December 2016 earlier today. In a press release, the publisher noted a decline in multiple categories, compared to the previous period last year.

Net sales saw a 6.2 percent drop to 53,507 million Yen ($471 million) for the first nine months of fiscal year 2016. Operating income took a 51.7 percent hit, dropping down to 5,119 million yen ($$4.5 million).

The publisher said that sales of Dead Rising 4 were “firm”, and the various Resident Evil re-releases had “solid” sales overseas, along with Monster Hunter Generations. That said, sales were down compared to the same period last year due to the absence of a hit Monster Hunter title.

Spin-off Monster Hunter Stories, for instance, had “soft” sales.

With that in mind, Capcom said it’s planning an “aggressive” sales campaign for its major titles. These include Resident Evil 7, and Monster Hunter XX. This is being done in part to maintain the same forecast for the end of the fiscal year, which wraps up March 31, 2017.

Finally, Capcom said it’ll focus more on VR content going forward with the goal of creating a new market, and has undergone some reorganisation internally to better fit the transition. The company is confident in the move thanks to the “successive releases of VR devices that are highly compatible with games.”