Capcom Explained Why It Prioritizes the PC Market
Capcom has revealed its development plans for the coming years and explained why achieving them requires making PC the most important target platform for the publisher's games.
- In the current fiscal year Capcom wants to sell 32 million games;
- The plan is to reach 50 million and then 100 million games a year;
- The key to this is PCs, which offer access to a larger pool of potential customers, and digital distribution, which allows for games to be sold around the world and easy prices changes depending on conditions;
- Digital distribution also makes it easier to monetize old releases from the publisher's catalog.
A month ago, Capcom announced that it wants PCs to become the main hardware platform for its titles within a few years. As early as 2022 or 2023, half of the game sales are expected to be on PC. The Japanese publisher has just published a new financial report and included additional information about this plan and the reasons why it decided to go for it.
Capcom has ambitions to sell 50 million, and in the long run 100 million, copies of its games per year. Only betting on the PC and digital distribution can make these plans a reality, as it will enable the publisher to reach customers around the world. Currently, the company's games are bought in more than 200 countries and it is crucial to increase the results in developing markets.
In 2020, Capcom sold 25.5 million copies of its games, of which only 5 million were boxed editions. Digital distribution is, therefore, an absolute priority for the publisher. It not only strongly increased (by 20%) the profits from each copy sold, but also made it possible for Capcom to make excellent money on older titles. Revenues from the latter segment of the company's business have increased by 583% since 2010.
Developing markets, in particular, are eager to catch up and offer great potential for finding buyers for classic games. Capcom emphasizes that digital distribution on PC gives it the greatest pricing flexibility, enabling the company to easily adapt pricing to local conditions as well as to quickly organize sales.
Capcom's increased investment in PC games has been observed for many years. There are still instances where a PC release comes after a console release (such as Monster Hunter: World and the upcoming Monster Hunter: Rise), but these are rare exceptions to the rule and more and more of the publisher's titles are launching on PC at the same time as on other hardware platforms.
Helping with the global strategy is the hiring policy. Capcom is trying to increase the share of women in its staff (this increased from 20% in 2017 to 22% in 2021). The share of employees without Japanese citizenship is also growing - they now account for 6.5% of all employees, while four years ago it was only 4.3%.
The document also contained other interesting information. It was assured that work on Pragmata is progressing at a good pace, and a large part of the team consists of young workers who are to become the publisher's future. The plans also include further intensive development of the RE Engine technology and more frequent adaptation of the company's franchises to other media, such as films and series.
