Capcom Five - Legacy

Legacy

The Capcom Five announcement came at a time when Nintendo had been struggling with its new console, with the apparent goal of supporting the fledgling system. However, each successive game's release reinforced Capcom's view that the GameCube was unprofitable; they ported the games one-by-one to Sony's PlayStation 2. These ports were generally inferior in quality: many reviewers noted slowdown issues and lower resolution graphics. Ultimately, four games were released and only one remained exclusive to GameCube. This lone GameCube exclusive was P.N.03 and not Resident Evil 4, as Capcom had repeatedly emphasized in press releases. GameCube owners and Nintendo fans were disappointed by the Capcom Five's failure to improve the GameCube's reputation and sales. Luke Plunkett of Kotaku noted that despite best intentions, Capcom's five even at their full potential could not have made up for the GameCube's failings in that generation's console wars.

Capcom discovered a few business principles through their experience with development and release of the five. The first was to focus on multi-platform releases. Second, Capcom needed to streamline development. Prior to the five, the company had announced expected losses of US$103 million for fiscal year 2002, largely due to poor sales and extended development times, and ultimately posted over US$163 million in losses. Resident Evil 4 was a case in point, beginning development in 1999 and going through four discarded versions by the time of its 2005 release. The third lesson was to focus on old franchises rather than create new ones; Resident Evil 4 was the only unmitigated commercial success of the five and also the only game based on an existing property. To wit, Viewtiful Joe 2 started development shortly after the release of Viewtiful Joe and was completed just a year later. However, the brisk schedule meant that the team was not given time to implement all the features they had wanted, including a cooperative gameplay mode. Viewtiful Joe 2 debuted on both GameCube and PlayStation 2 to reach a wider audience and maximize profitability.

To facilitate Viewtiful Joe 2's development, Capcom turned "Team Viewtiful" into Clover Studio, a semi-autonomous production company with a focus on developing new intellectual properties (IPs). The separation was also in part due to Resident Evil 4's PlayStation 2 release, which caused significant tensions between Capcom and Mikami, who had touted the game's console exclusivity. However, the studio only produced two new IPs before Capcom closed it in late 2006, following the resignations of Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, and Shinji Mikami. These resignations were part of a series of high-profile departures from Capcom, including Yoshiki Okamoto in 2003 and Keiji Inafune in 2010. The former Clover developers charged that Capcom's corporate management was reluctant or actively opposed to risky new ideas, a complaint shared by Keiji Inafune. They would go on to found Platinum Games with members of their old studio. In 2008, they announced the "Platinum Three", referring to MadWorld, Infinite Space, and Bayonetta, which would attempt to carry on the Capcom Five's ambitious and creative original spirit.

Outside of Capcom, Killer7 served as a turning point for Suda51 and his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, effectively launching his career. With Capcom as publisher, Killer7 was his first game to be released outside Japan. While its sales were not up to Capcom's standards, the game's cult success encouraged the director to remake two of his older Japan-only games, The Silver Case and Flower, Sun, and Rain, for Western release. It also allowed his next major title, No More Heroes, to be released to critical and commercial success. The game also cemented Suda51's status as an auteur video game director. He would later work with Shinji Mikami again on Shadows of the Damned.

Despite the relative failure of the project as a whole, the individual games of the Capcom Five had a lasting impact on game design. After experimenting with action gameplay in P.N.03, Mikami was able to apply his experience to Vanquish, which serves as an evolution and refinement of the former's gameplay. On the other hand, Adam Sorice of Nintendojo has suggested that P.N.03's stereotypically sexy all-female cast had unfortunate implications for gender equality in gaming. He also opined that the commercial failure of such a women-driven game has made Capcom reluctant to feature female leads in future games. Beyond its critical success, Resident Evil 4 has become one of the most influential games of the decade. Its "over-the-shoulder" perspective has inspired third-person shooters and action games as diverse as Gears of War and Batman: Arkham Asylum. Leon's precision-aiming laser sight has also found its way into Dead Space and Grand Theft Auto, as an alternative to "lock-on" targeting. On a broader scale, Resident Evil 4 deconstructed the survival horror conventions the first Resident Evil games established. Some reviewers accused the game of abandoning the genre's essence by adopting an increased emphasis on action and combat. Following Resident Evil 4's lead, many "horror" games in the next few years would shift toward more combat-heavy gameplay, including Silent Hill: Homecoming and Alone in the Dark.

For Nintendo, Capcom's reversal on GameCube exclusivity, particularly with Resident Evil 4, was a betrayal that soured relations between the two companies for several years. After this early pulling of Capcom support, the GameCube went on to sell 22 million units, less than the Nintendo 64's 33 million units and only a fraction of the PlayStation 2's 150 million units. Though Resident Evil 4 was eventually ported to Nintendo's Wii in 2007, it also received a high-definition re-release for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2011. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released in 2008, featuring characters from Konami and Sega as a selling point. Kotaku reported on a rumor that Nintendo refused to include a character from Capcom as a direct result of Resident Evil 4's multi-platform release. With the Wii, Nintendo has been commercially successful despite its continued lack of third-party developer support. The Wii had mostly relied on first-party titles to sell systems until 2009 when in-house development could not keep up with demand for new material. This caused sales to drop and prompted a shift toward more aggressive courting of third-party developers. For the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo has attempted to recruit outside developers early on to avoid a repeat of what happened to the Wii and reclaim the third-party support it enjoyed in the NES and SNES eras.