CAPCOM president and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Haruhiro Tsujimoto was interviewed during the Tokyo Game Show 2023 event that ended yesterday. Speaking to Bloomberg, when asked about a potential Microsoft acquisition offer, he replied:
I would gracefully decline the offer because I believe it would be better if we were equal partners.
Likewise, CAPCOM isn’t interested in acquiring companies, either, preferring organic growth.
I think there have been many M&A talks in the game industry. There was once a time we were a target, but rather than acquiring an outside company, we prefer organic growth. It is important to train and develop human resources in-house in order to carry out growth strategies. I also believe we can utilize external partners, but we have no intention of acquiring companies.
One of the main goals outlined by the CAPCOM president is bringing the publisher’s prized triple-A games to smartphones.
For many years, PC has been our main platform. We are currently selling in 230 countries and regions through this PC platform. While we continue to use PC as our main platform, I hope to achieve our 100 million copies goal with contribution from triple-A titles on smartphones.
This begins soon, with Resident Evil Village coming to iPhone and iPad on October 30. Resident Evil 4 remake is also scheduled to launch on Apple’s mobile devices later this year.
CAPCOM president Haruhiro Tsujimoto also shared some interesting statements in another interview with Nikkei. Specifically, he pointed out that development costs are rising for Japanese game developers, and perhaps it is time to increase prices.
It’s worth noting that the publisher has continued to release its games at the standard $60 price. As such, Tsujimoto-san may be just hinting that it’s time for CAPCOM to follow suit with the other publishers and start pricing its future games (like Dragon’s Dogma 2, perhaps) at $70.
